Why I Hate the Spring and Summer Seasons at the Petstore...

[dustbunny86]

I work part-time at a local independent petstore and every spring and summer season, it's the same thing:

Customers bring us wild baby birds.

We are not wildlife rehabilitators. And when I give these customers the contact information for the Wildlife Refuges in the area, they don't want to take the bird there. They expect us, petstore employees, to take these baby birds and handfeed them or take them to the wildlife refuges ourself. To shirk the resposibility, many of these customers will just leave the birds in the boxes up at the front counter or on the sidewalk in front of the store...

So far, we've had 4 European starlings, 3 scrub jays, 3 sandpipers, a barn owl, and an American crow "dumped" with us.

I'd say over 90% of the customers who do this do not take the time to look for and replace the birds back in their nest, or even give the baby birds' parents time to come down and feed them. They just scoop up the birds, put them in a cardboard box and haul them down to the petstore. "Here you go, we found some baby birds."

Ugh. I apologize for the rant but is it really that hard for people to leave nature alone and not interfere? Or if they do decide to interfere, at least be responsible and get the birds to a rehabilitation facility where the birds can be given proper care and be released? Whenever this happens, I have to take the time to drive these birds to the wildlife sanctuary and although I feel good knowing they will be cared for, it shouldn't be my responsibility in the first place.

[kali]

we got a litter of kittens bought into our store and we don't even sell kittens or puppies! so we had to take them bcoz the lady said if we didn't her boyf would kill them.

we couldn't take them to the RSPCA bcoz they were under 500 grams and if they are that small they kill them straight away.

anyway, turns out the poor things were riddled with fleas and had worms and were only like 4 weeks old.

the lady was overheard at a shop a few doors down saying how easy it was for us to take them and she knows where she's gonna take the next lot...

we are used as dumping stations. it's awful.

[loyallyroyal]

oh wow, why doesnt the lady just fix her cats?

kali do you have a no-kill shelter near you? or a humane society?
They are better about taking stuff and not killing it

I added a fifth bunny on the 4th of July, someone dumped their little dwarf bunny at the park, really sweet thing, took me forever to catch it though

[kali]

there might be a no kill shelter around, but if there is i don't know it.

she doesn't fix her cat bcoz she ignorant.

[vle1170]

People drive me up the wall. Kinda makes me glad I cant work anymore, because its so tempting to slap folks with the way they are with animals anymore.
A petstore i used to help out at, they used to get dumps all the time. There were 3 kittens, only about 2 weeks old dropped on the door step, a cockatiel with cage and all was dumped with a note saying "please find her a good home" and somebody even dropped a large iguana, and the list goes on.
Not to mention the idiots that abuse animals, some people shouldnt be allowed to breed.

[Ashling]

An merican crow! wow! They're really smart. And a barn owl! Beautiful birds. How sad they weren't left alone :( What did you do with the kittens, Kali?

[jenseits]

dustbunny86 -- yeah, it makes me sad. I see people post stuff like that all the time on various places on the internet. They just pick some bird off the ground and then turn to the web to ask "how do I take care of it?" I guess once they figure out they can't, they dump it on you guys. People need to stop taking birds out of their environments... most of the time the birds are perfectly healthy and would have been fine if they hadn't been essentially bird-napped.

[kali]

one of the girls took them home and cared for them until they were old enough to find good homes. she wormed, vaccinated them and had done so for two other litters in that same kitten season. it was better than the RSPCA [utting them down, which they would have..

[LadyLightning]

People need to learn when the bird needs help and when it doesn't. Everybody is in such a rush these days.
I kept a sparrow last year, only because there are way too many cats in my neighbourhood and she had been knocked out of the nest along with another baby. The other baby got eaten by a cat. The 1 that I got could fly but still had sheathes(?) on her tail feathers so she really couldn't fly too well. I let her go after about 5 weeks.

[kali]

i've never seen a baby bird fallen out of a nest..

but then i grew up in an area where we didn't really have a lot of TREE's.