I wonder if we should be aiming higher

[appps]

We bought two new cabs the other day that had been kept in fairly good conditions.

However he was terribly rough putting them in this tiny plastic container with no lid. We walked out without any info and never a word asked did we know how to care for them.

It annoyed me for a bit then i realised that it goes for all their pets. I could have walked out with any animal except a reptile and they wouldnt have cared less if i didnt know how to keep it alive for more than a day. They are there to make money, not protect animals.

Which got me thinking maybe while educating stores is a worthy thing perhaps we are targeting the wrong people? Maybe its a bit higher up that we be that we should be writing too?
I cant buy a lizard unless i show enough knowledge to get a licence. Maybe what we should be doing is working on having hermit cabs put into the same catagory so you cant just walk in off the street and buy them as a disposable pet.

Perhaps its time the department that allows the collection and now export of our aussie crabs should be made aware that the minimal losses at collection dont roll on to after they are sold

[ladybug15057]

I am not sure how the 'chain of command' works in Aus. but here in the U.S. it is stated to attempt to talk to the manager of the store which one has a complaint. If the problem is not corrected then contact cooperate with the:
Name of the store, and the address
Store ID that can be found on the receipt if one made any purchase.
Date and time of visit
What ones observations were at the time of their visit
and the name of the manager they attempted to talk to

With this information, submit it to cooperate.

[appps]

I guess what I mean is try and change the rules altogether. Lobby for crabs to be put under the same banner as lizards so Joe blow can't just walk in and buy them. LizRds have specific care needs so you need to apply for a licence here to be able to keep them. Crabs have similar needs so why don't they also need a licence? Because the general thought is that anyone can keep one.

Crazy crab has now started exporting to the USA. On his application he states that there is almost no mortality rate for the crabs. However the mortality rate once purchased is increadably high. I wonder if they would allow the export of say birds knowing a huge percentage would be kept in unacceptable living conditions aNd not survive their first month. However they don't know because the government department has only the info from crazy crab to go by when making the decision to allow them to be harvested And sold

[ladybug15057]

I agree and understand what you are saying. But what many have come up across in the past is that hermies are scavengers and a pest in most areas they naturally live at. (like ants or other annoying insects)
Little example:
On another group I belong to a couple years ago a member had written a post. She had originally lived in the Caribbean all her life but married a U.S. military man. Where she lived they actually tried to get rid of/deter hermies because when the sun would begin to set they would literally be on her porch, sidewalk, driveway, on her house, window sills, etc. It made many uneasy due to how many there were. She was totally amazed when her husband bought 10 hermies to keep them as pets when where she was originally from tried so hard to deter them away from their homes.
This makes it a little hard sometimes to try to change certain laws (at least here in U.S.) when a creature is considered a pest.
But this doesn't stop some of us from continuously trying.

[Wai]

Hermit crabs are also inexpensive to replace as they are taken directly from the wild, rather than hatched under strict conditions.