This broke my heart to read...

[buffcajun]

***BEFORE YOU TAKE A REPTILE***
Imagine that you are locked in very small room, a small bathroom, say, or a storage closet.

Imagine that there is a small window way up high in one wall. All you can see is a small patch of sky.

Imagine that you have no control over the light - someone outside the room turns it on and off. If you want to sleep when the light is on, you must close your eyes and block it out as best you can.

Imagine that you have no control over the heat. Sometimes you are hot. Sometimes you are so hot you pant, getting very dry and thirsty. But there is no water bowl because the person outside the room read a book that said you don't need to have water available all the time.

Other times you are cold. You are so cold that you can't move, you can't eat, you can't think. If the person outside comes in and tries to move you, it is like moving a stiff plastic toy. They pick up your arm--it moves so slowly, even if they try to make it go fast. When they let it go, if flops hard on the ground. It hurts, but you are too cold to even move away or whimper with the pain.

Imagine that, once or twice a day, someone opens the door and quickly shoves in some food and water. Imagine that sometimes they forget for a day, or two, or three. Or more. Imagine if they go away for the weekend, or a week or two, and leave you alone.

Imagine that, once a week or so, someone comes in and cleans out the now scummy water bowl, spilled bits of food, and your own wastes. Sometimes they are in a hurry and don't do a very good job, leaving bits of it lying around.

*Imagine time passing. The light goes on. The light goes off. The patch of sky remains unchanged. Food is put in. Wastes are taken out. A year goes by.

You grow some, making the room seem smaller.

*Time passes. The light goes on. The lights go off. The patch of sky remains unchanged. Food is put in. Wastes are taken out. Another year goes by.

*You grow some more. The room is smaller still. You can no longer stretch out when you lay down or move about, but must curl up. Only a part of your body can be warm or cool at one time, so you are never warm enough or cool enough.

*Time passes. The lights go on. The lights go off. Another year goes by. The patch of sky remains unchanged. Another year goes by. Food is put in. When you pace in boredom, or in hunger, or in discomfort, you can not walk very far before coming to a wall, or your water bowl, or the growing piles of wastes from the last several days. And still another year goes by.

*Five years have now passed. You are still alive.

*But what kind of life is it...?

[russman]

Now imagine you are a REPTILE in those circumstances and not a HUMAN. Things would be quite a bit different.

[codingcomrade]

I already live in that existence its called work. Small office with a little window to look outside, I am allowed to eat at 12:00pm every day, the computer controls the temps, oh and the janitor occasionally stops by to clean out my office (he doesn't do a good job all the time sometimes he forgets to empty out the trash).

[PsyKoViggy]

we can't control and weather any more than a reptile in a vivarium can.. if its cold outside we can't change that and at night we can't turn the sun on.
So its not any different from being in the wild in that respect.

Plus theres more to it than that, if you care for them properly. They get to watch everything going on around them without having to worry they may get eaten.. more fun than hiding on a hole all the time?
and they get handled and get to explore things and get more interesting food..

reptiles don't use up energy like mammals do.. they do a lot more waiting and basking and sleeping and a lot less rushing around, so quiet time to themselves isn't a bad thing either..

i would have thought it was more cruel to keep things such as cats.. especially house cats.
not saying keeping them is cruel, just that i'm sure their captive lives are a lot more different from their wild ones than that of a captive reptile.

[buffcajun]

That actually came from Melissa Kaplan about what its like to be a reptile that's not taken care of. Maybe I let my emotions get away from me sometimes, but I just love reptiles so much! I saw a 6 year old kid in a pet store begging his dad for this little scrawny $10 iggie because he thought it would be a cool pet. Dad bought it after making the kid promise that he would take care of it, and said they would come back in two weeks for the lights because he couldn't afford them.Yeah...

[codingcomrade]

Yeah it is sad to think about, but that is our emotions and our thoughts not that of the reptiles so its kinda hard to say thats how they feel when most of them just hide in one spot all day out in the wild anyways. About that kid and his dad i see that all the time here in Florida, and its a real problem especially when it comes to burmese pythons and such.

[thesilverbeast]

wow iguanas are onle 10 bucks over there? i can see why theres a problem when they get too big. the most common reptile here is the bluey and even thats more than $50 most of the time.



back on topic... it made me feel a bit down reading that, but thats because i did what it said... imagined I was in those circumstances, not me as a reptile.

[buffcajun]

Yeah, we have a guy up here that rescues any reptile that people can't take care of. He has anywhere from 30-50 pythons at a time available for adoption.
Sorry to all if I appeared goofy by posting that.

[buffcajun]

I'm sorry Silver...didn't mean to make you sad.

[Katrina]

Interesting and saddening read. Unfortunately, thats how life is for a lot of captive reptiles. At least people on here strive to give their blueys some room to wander, temp. gradient and good care. Definitely a good reminder though, and hopefully one of those people who is keeping two blueys in a dirty 20 gallon (thats how I found the little rescues) will read it someday and think.

[buffcajun]

Turok is in a 60 gallon terrarium...he looks so little in there...lol. I'm going to take some better pics of him today.
BTW... I am debating whether to get that bluey from the pet store. This one is full grown, but has been declawed in a most horrible way. She's VERY expensive but she's been there for 2 months and no one wants her. She seems to like me though.

[SailleSkinklover]

The sad thing is, people who keep animals in those deplorable conditions usually can't read. . .

You know, reading the original post, at least the waste was cleaned out. . .

Herps are definitely better geared for that type of life than mammals, but there are certain species of herps who do need to wander in search of a mate such as Blueys. . .

[Fatal_S]

That was very sad

[Zbiz]

I'm sorry but this is one of the dumbest things i have ever read. I actually felt i lost intellegence reading this. We put way too many human emotions into reptiles. Their cerebral cortex is some of the smallest of any animal. They rely on 95% instinct. Physically they cant have emotions. Its impossible. You can look at all reptile care as cruel... Do they want to be locked up in a cage? They usually want out. But reptile keeping as a hobby is quite selfish if you want to look at it at its core. Yes we love our animals but i promise its not returned. Humans have an urge to control and play god. So I guess all we can do is accomidate our pets as best we can. Is it sad... yes but we still keep them.

[NomadOfTheHills]

This screams PETA.

There is no science to it, only personification and anthropomorphism.

[echoxxash]

I agree Nomad.

In a perfect world, idiots wouldn't be allowed to have pets...or children...but they do and there's nothing we can do about it.

However, idiots aren't the only ones that keep their reptiles in a cage...in a room with a window that's too high...with lights that go on and off and certain times.
Responsible people do it too, you do it, we all do. That is what's required to keep a reptile in captivity. It'd be nice if we could turn our entire house into a miniature Australia, but the large, large majority of us can't. So, a cage is the best we can do. Ideally (for the reptile) they would still be out in the wild...but, thanks to us, who are all idiots in this sense, continue to develop and destroy their land.

So, slowly die out in the wild or be in taken care of by (hopefully) responsible people and thrive for decades as a species?

[Lucifer_Spades]

This screams PETA.

There is no science to it, only personification and anthropomorphism.

I believe they said it came from Mellisa Kaplan's site.

But I agree, reptiles are not humans, their requirements are not like humans and trying to compare what a person would feel in a situation with what a reptile would feel is rather pointless.

We as humans cannot know what a reptile thinks or feels, we have no way of knowing if it is sad or happy or is even capable of those types of feelings.

But I think all the article is trying to get across is that animals in our care need the best care we can give them, we have complete power over what they eat and when, whether they have water or not, if they live in their own feces or not, and whether they are in cramped quarters or not.

We all know that if an animal is not given proper conditions and care it's health will deteriorate, but as to what it thinks of the situation we can never know.

[Scotts1au]

These are animals that spend 6 months of the year sitting in a crack in a log.

[Lucifer_Spades]

These are animals that spend 6 months of the year sitting in a crack in a log.

BTS are, but the article refers to all reptiles in general. I'd like to se you try convince an Iguana to sit in a crack in a log for 6 months. I bet you'd lose.

[Scotts1au]

Good point, but obviously I was just referring to BTS. Iggies don't enter my thoughts cos we can't have em - probably a good thing.

I should know by now not to buy into these discussions reminds me of when I used to work for a farming organisation and made a flippant comment about plans for Kanga culling which got blown up in the Sydney Morning Herald - uh oh! Luckily all I got was a few silent phone calls.

No more from me on this.