Pet stores and tarantulas

I frequent a few pet shops on a regular basis, for entertainment, to pass the time, and to buy crickets.  One pet store I go to frequently had a Avicularia avicularia, a pinktoe tarantula.  They had her in a very large glass aquarium, with no side ventilation, sitting on sand, with nothing to climb on.  Anyone who knows anything about keeping Avics knows this is a really bad idea.  Everything is wrong about this setup.  I saw her and felt sad.  I kind of wanted to rescue her, but that seemed like a bad idea, because the store would probably replace her with another one, and treat it badly as well.  I wanted to say something, to write a letter, to jump up and down and complain, but I am just not that assertive.  After seeing her in a sorry state for about 2 months, I decided to take her home, knowing it was a stupid idea.

When I bought her, I mentioned to the sales guy that she was inappropriately housed, and described how she should be housed.  He claimed that he just hadn't had time yet to fix up her housing.  I didn't say anything about how I had watched her for 2 months.  When I got her home it was clear that she wasn't well.  I tried tarantula ICU off and on for a number of days, trying to get her sufficiently re-hydrated.  She did rally for a little while, even did a little webbing.  Then she settled down on the substrate and got progressively worse.  Another round of spider ICU did nothing, and finally she did the tarantula death curl.

Here she is when she was about as well as she ever got in my care:

A very beautiful spider!

Pet stores generally seem to keep tarantulas in inappropriate ways.  They often don't seem to know or care whether the animal was captive bred or wild caught.  I asked a sales person in a different store about whether or not a particular spider was wild caught or not, and he said well of course it was, you couldn't breed them in captivity.  I then listed two different breeders of said species, and he just kind of mumbled and moved on.

The moral of the story is, don't buy arachnids from pet stores, go to a reputable breeder!  (I will take my own advice in the future).