Exotic Pets Being Dumped Due to the Economy
Lost Homes Equals Apartment Pets
TCPalm.com, in Florida, has posted an article by Susannah Bryan of the Sun-Sentinel, "Economy's no picnic for exotic pets either," that reports that strapped exotic pet owners are bailing out from ownership.
The report comes out of South Florida and the animals that are mentioned are pot-bellied pigs, horses, parrots, snakes and tarantulas.
The article goes on to report that Everglades Outpost wildlife refuge co-founder Bob Freer has said that all kinds of animals have been left at his such as a macaw, a monkey from Madagascar and a shorthair kitten.
Freer has also been contacted by home owners who have found assorted "pets" such as alligators and snakes left behind by tenants.
People are basically looking for pets they can keep in apartments after losing their homes.
Bryan's article focuses on parrots and several parrot refuge shelters, including PARROTS, a rescue group in Leigh Acres have indicated they are full, more than full of parrots. In fact one indicated that they get 50 to 60 requests per week.
People do love their exotic pets and some people believe all type of animals and, in fact, all animals, have human-like qualities.
I have written about this story before:
Several years ago I did some consulting work with a retail store that sold, as a promotion, about one-half foot cubes filled with water and decorated like aquariums. Also the cube contained one guppy. The cubes were outrageously popular.
The owner of the store received a letter from the director of the local chapter of the SPA. She said that the guppies were suffering "mental anguish" and that their environment was cutting short their life span.
Guppies in the wild live about two to three days.
Certainly at times humans' views of animals go a little beyond common sense. As Susannah Bryan's article reports should you choose to read it all, while people swear allegiance to these exotic animals for life, the animals are the first thing to go in an economic crisis.
There's a message here somewhere.
References:
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/sep/18/economys-no-picnic-exotic-pets-either/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Guppy.jpg
Published by Gary Davis
Retired Insurance CEO. Trained in medicine and medicines. Trained in mental health particularly manic depression as well as most illnesses (from medical underwriting. Business owner, business, marketing,... View profile
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- Exotic Pets Being Dumped Due to the Economy
1 Comments
Post a CommentInteresting, and sad. I feel bad for those pets who just left behind. I've heard that even before the economy went downhill, exotic pets still became victims of being dumped because their owners realized exactly how big their, let's just say, "pet alligator" had become. I wonder how much more the increase has been exactly ...