Misguided

kai-ni:

wanderingberserker:

yourownpetard:

justnoodlefishthings:

kai-ni:

So today I heard this story. I won’t say from where just to cover my butt, but it happened.

So a woman went into one of the two major chain pet stores and asked to buy… all of their birds. 27 birds, of various types. Employees questioned her and couldn’t find anything that was expressly a red flag (aside from you know… wanting to buy… ALL the birds they had in stock… weird…) and ended up selling this woman… all their birds. She didn’t buy cages, she didn’t buy supplies, just… almost a thousand dollars worth of… bird.

Then she went over to the OTHER chain pet store in her town, and attempted to buy all of THEIR birds. Second store employees got suspicious, called the first store to ask if she bought cages. Denied the sale upon hearing she didn’t, I think.

but wait, there’s more! You can probably guess where this is going…

Next day, the woman comes into chain store #1 and asks to purchase all their guinea pigs, mice, and reptiles. All of them. Obviously, staff is weirded out. One of the managers apparently gets suspicious and gets into contact with the apartment the woman lives at, by the address she put on the paperwork from the purchase of all the birds.

Apartment manager tells the store manager that the apartment has a 2 pet limit.

Actual red flag, refuses to sell her anything else.

It comes out this woman was going to RELEASE all these animals after buying them, and even goes so far as to insist the employees should let her do it if they ‘love animals’.

And I just. Wow. There’s so much wrong with that idea.

These are all captive born and raised animals. Pets. Species that don’t naturally exist around here. So for one, they cannot survive in the wild. They largely don’t know how to get food aside from having it given to them by humans. The birds she probably already let go will get eaten by any number of things, or starve to death more likely. If the animals do survive, they’re invasive and can seriously fuck up the ecosystem.

And yet this woman was convinced, spent HUNDREDS of dollars (if it wasn’t a stolen card idk really like… really?) because she thought releasing these helpless animals to wreak havoc in the wild was some kind of kindness.

It just boggles my mind. How can you claim to love animals and understand them so little? What she was doing was torture, perfectly happy to sentence those animals to a painful death.

And yea, chain pet stores sell animals to people who don’t take care of them, which isn’t much better. But um… dropping thousands of dollars to… let them into the ‘wild’ …. is not the answer holy shit.

Reminds me of the time PETA bought a bunch of lobsters to ‘save’ them from slaughter for food and released them into a freshwater river. Where they fucking died because they’re saltwater. lol.

I just I CANNOT BELIEVE people. Aiyeee. I feel bad for the birds this woman did manage to buy.

I once read a story about a lab in California raising baby condors from the egg, hoping to eventually release them into the wild. Well one night, some “animal rights” activists broke into the lab and “freed” all the juvenile condors with exactly 0 survival skills.

All of the condors died. They starved, were eaten, or shot. An entire generation of critically endangered birds lost because of some incredibly disillusioned assholes.

If you buy animals from a pet store guess what they will do with the money. Buy more animals to sell.

Personally, while I think the idea of freeing such animals is nice, I doubt simply letting them go would work. Rather, one would likely have to aclimatize them to the wild first.

No. It doesn’t work like that. These are captive bred non-native animals. Take a syrian hamster, for example. It’s out of its native habitat (which would be… Syria), in a place where temperature and enviornment is not correct for it (it would freeze to death in the winter here for one thing I’m fairly certain) and it has no idea how to find its own food, if appropriate food is availible because again, it’s not native. It would die of starvation, or malnutrition or cold even if it acclimated to finding food on its own bc it is not in the proper enviornment.

Not to mention the damage of introducing a non-native species into an enviornment. When non-native species are introduced into the wild and conditions ARE right for them to thrive, they take over, and out compete native species and THOSE die. It’s very damaging to the enviornment. This is a rampant problem in florida with animals that do well in the warm humid temps.

So no you really should not just release captive bred PET animals in the wild on some silly notion that they want ‘freedom’. They don’t miss the wild – they’re captive bred. What we should be advocating for is PROPER CARE of these animals, because as long as they are getting everything they need for their health and wellbeing in captivity, they can thrive. And the goal is for the animal to thrive, not suffer. Which is likely what it would do if you let it go.