Yes, there WAS a strip for Saturday- this isn’t replacing it, I put it up for the heck of it.

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to write about this time around.

I'm sitting here, watching Animal Cops Houston, and its reminding me of the many times I've experienced animal abuse coming through the petstore I work at. Its so astonishing... How many times I've seen it, how easy it is now to spot it, to spot the lies surrounding it. Its frightening, too.

Probably my first experience at the store with an abuse case was a abused iguana. So many of these have since come in, that they meld together in my memory. Usually, they come in cramped into cages with barely enough room to turn around, filth covering the bottom of the cage. The physical problems are far worse then the caging, though, as many are covered in mites so bad that itlooks as if their very skin is crawling. Their faces are deformed from nutritional problems that will more likely never be treatable, and very often their tails have been broken off from improper handling. Even sadder, these iguana's usually come in with the tag "evil" on them, like it is the lizards fault they are in this condition. More often then not, I'll find they are perfectly sweet apon handling, or are "man-haters" because often college age guys buy them and then they or their friends torment the iggy, making it mean towards men.

I've also seen animals come in so bad I didn't think they'd make the night. One, a ferret that was a sack of bones and shook so bad we had to put a heat lamp on her - it took alot of work, but she survived. Another, a hamster that someone bought for their daughter... Who never fed her. She didn't get help in time to save her life. Chinchillas intrusted to parents who didn't want to take care of them while their daughter was in college. Sons leaving their snakes in the garages for their snake-fearing mom's to hopefully feed. The list continues on.

Most recently, we worked with animal controllto remove the "exotics" from the house of a frequent costomer of ours. I didn't get a chance to enter the house, but I saw the -few- animals that made it out alive. Starved chinchillas, sick monitors, dying snakes, aggressive and paranoid birds, screaming sugar gliders. The owner of our store talked about some of the creatures "left" at the house - The ones who had been dead so long only the bleached bones remained, or they had dried still looking alive, nothing more then the husks of skins. A cage of mice in which all the mice had died, leaving nothing but a carpet of white fur.

This, from a 40 year old man, living with family, who didn't have a life or have to pay rent. In the end, he had the gall to come back to our store and ask for some of his snakes back.

Being a petstore, we can't afford vet care for everyone. Most of these guys we've learned to treat ourselves, and considering the odds we've been up against, I think I've learned how to save these lifes well. But...It wears on me. I don't mind taking life, like those of mice and rats, for snakes to eat. Thats for the continuation of life though. Wasted life sickens me like nothing else.

Well, this has been your morbid rant of the day, hope you now have a greater understanding of the emotions of those behind the counter at your petstores.