That lady that was dead set on adopting Maddie for her kid, and swore up and down she knew chin care, and I told her, go read my care packet and fill out the adoption form and get that back to me? Yeah, never heard from her.
That guy that came into work with his parents that were looking to adopt Snickers and told me, they'd let me know, but wanted her on hold when they decided? Yeah, haven't seen em. They thought I was going to be in there Friday, and I wasn't, so I guess I missed that opportunity, but they live right in town, so couldn't they have stopped in, just to say, hey, this is my decision? Or even just, if they did come in Friday (which I don't know either way), tell someone else, hey, tell Ashley....
Then, I got a text from someone interested in one of the chins. I was at work, so it took me an hour or two to respond to her. Told her, care packet, adoption form, the works. Get a text back, they found someone getting rid of theirs, and they're gonna get that one instead. Which is fine, but, I dunno, I guess I see it differently cause it's a live animal. If I contact someone about an animal and ask if it's available, I'll at least give them a day to get back to me before I start going and looking elsewhere. But these people don't do that. Not even this one specifically, I routinely have people where I call them back, and they say, "oh, which one are you? Oh, NWI Chinchilla Rescue. Oh. And what chins do you have available? Oh, a lot, ok, well can you tell me about each one? Oh, which one was I interested in? Oh, well I dunno, I must have emailed and phoned 20 people about different chinchillas today." *boom* <-- head explodes
Now, the people who did get back to me were the people who had bought some guinea pigs from me as babies and needed to return them. They got back to me, and brought over the piggies, the cage, their stuff. As usual, I asked them to sign the surrender form and all that, and they said that they had written down the info in a card they wrote to me. Still had em fill out the form, thought nothing of the card, til I opened it the next day and they had donated $40. Which is just awesome, every little bit helps.
And then a few days ago I get this email:
I am interested in your chinchilla. I am hoping to have a coat made for my wife for valentines day.
Obviously this will require many of the little rats. Do you happen to have any more?
I have three at present, but a coat for a woman the size of my wife will require substantially more.
-Thanks!
And that is a troll... and in case you're not on the internet enough to know what that means, a troll is someone who posts something or emails something with the intention of causing a ruckus. Some people would go "omg!!! I can't believe that!! Let me write a 10 page email back on how horrible that is!!" Now, first off, because I'm a member of the MCBA, I can't publicly put down pelting. It's in their by-laws. Doesn't mean I couldn't email someone. But the thing is, this person isn't really going to have a coat made. There's a lot of effort that goes into it, and all those people who say they "save" the pet store chinchillas from being coats... no, they don't. That's just not how it works. Same with saving any chinchilla. Short of buying a chinchilla, as a baby, from a large breeder, there is no "preventing it from being a coat." Let me tell you why. The people that are pelting these chinchillas to make them into coats aren't using people's rejected pets. Or petstore chins. Or anything like that. They're raising the animals themselves and pelting their own animals. And chances are, if they think it'll make a good pelt, you'll never even get a crack at buying it.
But back to the point. Because I know it's a troll, I'm not going to feed the troll (as the saying goes), and they won't get what they want. So there.
Moving along.
Well, sort of on the same note I guess. The part about rescuing a chin or adopting a chin. I hear so often "I adopted a chin from Petsmart." No, you purchased a chin from petsmart. Petsmart does not adopt, they get in animals which they sell. Versus a rescue, or humane society / organization, where you do, legitimately, adopt, an animal. It's not the same. And you buying it only continues the cycle. Let me explain why with an example. I work at a pet store, and we have small animals there. One of my co-workers, who I love dearly and who totally has the same bleeding heart for animals as I do, has taken home multiple animals from the store. Now, don't get me wrong, she's making a difference to those animals. One gerbil was pregnant, she took it home so it could have babies not in the store, and she will be keeping the babies. One of our rats got pregnant, she bought it and took it home. And for those animals, yes, they will have a better life. Her thing was, she didn't want the baby rats going as feeders (which they would have, had they remained in the store), and also, our other rat (priced at $9.99 because it's supposed to be a "fancy pet rat") was sold as a feeder that day. So she didn't want the other rat going as a feeder (pregnant or not). Well, here's the thing. When we sell those animals, we have to keep those cages full. Whether I decide to get in a rat or a gerbil or hamster or whatever, something is going back in those cages. So whatever animal she buys, we replace with something else. And it may happen again, we may end up with more pregnant critters (we try our best to avoid that, but sometimes it seems they come in that way), and she may take them home again. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with that... but by buying them, the owner of the store is like "oooh look the hamsters and gerbils are selling, let's get more!!!" Rather than if they didn't sell, and the owner might decide, hey, scrap the animals (which legitimately was a thought at one point). Same goes with anything, whether it's a chinchilla or birds or whatever. At the store, we had birds just sitting there. Owner said, once they sell, not getting any more. Well, I dunno if it was parakeet week on discovery channel or something, but all of a sudden, we sold all our parakeets in like 5 days. Well shit, owner goes, "wait!! I can make money!! Let's get more birds!!" You see what happened? The animal went home, we got more (and actually, way more, cause now we have oodles of birds).
The thing is, if you want to take home a pet store animal, by all means. I see and interact with them just about daily, and they deserve love and care and a good home just as much as any animal. But just don't tell people (especially a rescue, cause it's not only me it irks) that you "rescued" the animal from the pet store.
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