Steve Larkin/Tropical Attitude Pets/ Custom Cage Works/ and on and on and on

It is important that our members - and all who ever wish to make a difference - be able to separate a PERSON from a JOB.

Despite any recent or future claims of total or partial policy or behavior change, Tropical Attitude Pets (TAP), its agents, owner and employees continue to engage in behavior that warrants their listing here in our Big Meaners section.

TAP and other mill brokers support the mill breeding trade through purchase of large quantities of gliders for the purpose of selling at trade shows, malls, fairs and the like. They promote and sustain the sale of gliders without lineage to uneducated and uninformed impulse buyers.

The vast majority (for my facility, it is currently 100%, but I don't want to speak for all rescues) of people who purchase from TAP and then later (within months) relinquish their gliders to a rescue home report that they feel they were "tricked" or "duped" into buying the glider(s) at a high price, with numerous unnecessary accessories or add-ons. They report that they were misinformed about the type, quantity and ease of care a glider requires and/or that they feel they were lied to or "tricked" about the bonding process with gliders. They are NOT relinquishing the gliders because they are terrible people or because they can't afford health care. They are relinquishing because they bought on impulse and were NOT properly or truthfully educated or informed at the time of purchase or the weeks following purchase.

Until such time as TAP and TAP's peers begin placing the LIVES that they barter as of greater importance than the money they make selling them, they will continue to make choices and engage in practices which negatively impact the dignity we have worked so hard to give to gliders and the high standards we have set in order to maintain healthy gliders with a lengthy life span.

Just sharing that in the last 9 monthsI have personally assisted with 14 gliders purchased from TAP in my area. 6 of those gliders were deceased and under 40 grams in weight. The remaining were all under 40 grams in weight when I first met them and were all ill - some of them very, very ill. The issues treated included parasites, malnutrition, bacterial infection and yeast overgrowth.

This is my personal experience, not hearsay or hype. Each of these encounters has documentation from vet or pathologist to back it up - along with receipts and paperwork from TAP (not that I doubt owner's stories of where they purchased).

I'm just sharing now because for some reason in the last year or so we are seeing fewer and fewer people sharing their personal experiences with the mill breeders and brokers.

They are still hard at work harming gliders and breaking hearts.