Amazon Reptile Center News

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!

SATURDAY JUNE 14TH AT 12 NOON STAFF MEMBER JOSE IS GOING TO SHAVE HIS HEAD. HE IS GOING TO DONATE THE CURLS TO LOCKS OF LOVE. LOCKS OF LOVE MAKES HAIRPIECES FOR CHILDREN WITH ALOPECIA OR ARE ENDURING CANCER TREATMENT.

LOCAL HAIRSTYLIST AND CUSTOMER
LAUREN GISH
HAS VOLUNTEERED TO DO THE DEED(S).

WANTED:

WE NEED OTHER FOLKS TO DONATE THEIR HAIR TOO. IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW WISHES TO PARTICIPATE PLEASE CONTACT SCOTT. WOULD IT NOT BE TERRIFIC IF WE COULD GET TEN FOLKS TO PARTICIPATE?

VIDEOGRAPHER!
Simon & Goodman Picture Co. IS DOING A DOCUMENTARY ON LOCKS OF LOVE AND IS SOLICITING VIDEO OF PEOPLE GETTING THE HAIR CUT FOR DONATION. WE NEED A VIDEOGRAPHER TO PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER.

ALL VOLUNTEERS PLEASE CONTACT SCOTT AT 909.957.5212

Other shop news:

Our yearly west Africa shipment has we have specials on Ball pythons ($19.99ea with breaks on buys up to 100 specimens) and Savannah monitors ($9.99 while supplies last). Emperor scorpions too at $9.99 while supplies last.

Landed today: Phrynops hilarii - Argentine sidnecks, just a week old. Too cute for $100! NO pics yet. Buy them now or look for pics in a week or so.

LOCKS OF LOVE

Our staff member Jose Palafox is going to shave his head and donate the hair to Locks of Love. We are making an eveny out of it. June 16th, 2008 starting at 12 Noon. The idea is to raise awareness for the charity and get other people involved. Everybody with long hair, male/female, blonde/red/black, curly/straight, children/teens/grownups... all are welcome. Hair Donations guidelines found here. The donation form is found here.

Jose has not cut his hair since we've known him. This is a long time. He is graduating high school soon and we've known him since junior high! He is ready for a new look and the fact he can help other folks in need is icing on the cake. This kid has been an important part of our team for a long time now. Almost four years! How many high school kids keep the same job for four years? Come out and support him in his effort.

We invite any and all of you with hair long enough to join us and donate your hair.

Calling all hairstylists! We need your services. If you would like to donate your skills for this worthy event, we can provide in store and internet cross promotion in exchange. Besides... Jose wants it done right! Otherwise I have to do it!

Amazon will have a discount for all in attendance and special discounts for participants. If you would like to participate in any capacity contact Scott at 909.447.5103.

OK folks, now is the time. Let's have some fun and support this worthy cause.

IT'S OUR SNAKE!

We made the SUPER BOWL. That is our snake. Scott and Mike are standing 30 feet off of camera right. What an amazing experience.

FIRST POST IN MONTHS

Wow how does time get away so fast? I keep chasing it but the faster I go the behinder I get. Please accept my apologies for taking so long to make this post.

We recently received shipment of some very nice animals from the middle east. The first ever Uromastyx philbyi or "The Arabian Blue" Dabb Lizard came in. We are the only importers ever to have these! Not even any in museum pickeld collecitons. Always cool to be the first.

Also in the shipment is some Arabian Sand Boas (Eryx jayakari). These are some outstanding specimens. Well hydrated, feeding well. No ectoparasites. No problems. Just beautiful egg laying boas! Orange eyes on top of the head make these some very interesting animals. The orange eyes seem to make them a different locality than other jayakari in the USA. Get yours now. Clean, beautiful, feeding specimens available. When they shed the tie themselves in an overhand knot to help push the skin down the body! WOW!

Also, there have been some staff changes since my lost post. Tim has moved on to apparently greener pastures. Thus, Crystal Laner has stepped up to manager of our Montclair location. Matthew McDole has been promoted to Manager of the Covina location and Kyle Frost is "vice managing" both stores during Crystal and Matt's days off.

To balance it out we have Jose Palafox (Montclair), Daniel O'Hara (Montclair), Trevor Yehle (Covina), Brad Duarte (Covina), Rory Gresco (Montclair), and Jocelyn McAdams (Both stores)

SPRING IS HERE!!!

Everybody is finally out of hibernation mode and ready to go! Our customers are already bringing us loads of eggs! Our incubators are quickly filling up with Bearded Dragons, Leopard Geckos (Check out Kyle's Albinos!), and Corn Snakes! It's going to be a productive year for a lot of folks, and we're in the pleasant position of seeing the smiles on our customers' faces when they meet their new babies!

We have quite a few exciting breeding projects going on here at Amazon as well! The staff in our Montclair store is diligently working on possibly proving out a new genetic mutation in corn snakes.

We may also be some of the first to produce captive bred Mexican Lined Pine Snakes, and the idea of these babies has some of our employees giddy with excitement.

Along with our customers bringing us THEIR babies, we get to introduce them to OUR babies. Here is a pic of a long-time customer, Hailee and her new Fantasy Frog! Aren't they adorable? Fantasy Frogs are a new animal we've only carried for the first time this year. They've been a big hit! We've had a hard time keeping them in the store already.

In other news: We have a couple of new faces to add to the list! Daniel has been volunteering with us for the better part of a year and we finally had an opening for him! Now you'll get to see him in our Montclair store on the weekends. Terry is a new addition in general and you can meet him on the weekends in our Covina store.

CUSTOMER APPRECIATION DAY

POSTED BY SCOTT: Mark your calenders. Saturday November 18th, 2006 is CUSTOMER APPRECIATION DAY! Thanks to all of you. We will have free lunches for everyone. Nessie our alligator friend will be here to greet the children. Nearly everything in the store discounted. Door prizes... tons of fun! This is our third year in a row with this party. Last two years was a blast this year will not be different. Google Earth users click here!

In case you haven't noticed, we have a new web guy. Yes, I am no longer posting animals and their respective ads! Our new web guy is Matt McDole. Matt is a bright kid and is getting the system tuned better for more ads of more animals in a shorter time. In the past we'd sell out of something before the pics were taken. This is coming to an end! Matt takes great pix, knows how to work webstuff and actually writes nice ad copy describing the animals well. Here is the copy from the Cobalt Tinc ad he just made "Beautiful captive bred babies, eating well and fat as butter! $39.99 (Normally $50!)". Hehe, fat as butter. I luv it!

Last item for today's shopnews. We now count among our staff eleven herp loving, hard working souls. We are rebuilding our "about us" pages and will let ya know when they go up!

New hours in effect. Montclair MON-FRI 11-7, SAT 10-6, SUN 11-5. Covina MON-SAT 10-6, SUN 11-5. Will update this on website soon as well.

HOLIDAY HOURS: Closed Thanksgiving. Friday December 1st, Staff Appreciation Day, Closed at 5PM. December 24th closed at 2PM, December 25th Closed, December 31 Closed 2PM, January 1, 2007 Closed.

EARLY AM EXCITEMENT

POSTED BY SCOTT: Early in the morning of 09/07/2006 AT ~ 02:41am some person driving a midsized sedan, drove INTO the restaurant next to our store. He then proceeded to DRIVE AROUND destroying part of our mutual wall, some glass reptile tanks and absolutely demolishing the restaurant. This restaurant "Tokyo Kitchen" is a very popular Sushi, Teppan restaurant that serves outstanding food and counts among it customers literally thousands of local people. I am saddened this good neighbor of ours will be out of business for some time to come.

No animals were harmed. Whew! Dude threaded the needle missing our display enclosures and our incubator by an inch or less.

Mike was awakened at 3AM by the Montclair PD. He responded quickly to witness the scene in dark early morning hours. He called me at 4AM and while Mike was busy with police, fire and the Montclair building inspector, I got busy calling our business insurance company State Farm insurance. I spoke to a few different folks and all showed concern for our reptiles. You've all heard it "and like a good neighbor, State Farm is there". Indeed they are our agent Craig Mauk was on scene at 4:30AM to witness the scene and help out with re-assuring us our claim process will go smoothly. I like this policy. It makes it better for us (his customer) and better for State Farm as his presence cuts down on claim fraud. Now nobody can make a false claim against us.

Click here for more pics of the crash.

When it was all done, dude high-centered the car on the liquor bar. When he got out of the car to leave he had presence of mind to take the keys, lock the car and set the alarm! When the police arrived and broke into the vehicle the alarm sounded.

The "restoration specialists" responded quickly, boarded up our wall, cleaned up the mess and then went to work for the restaurant boarded up their windows. What an exciting weekend, we could have done with out! Mike missed finishing a nights sleep, Tokyo Kitchen is temporarily out of business and the driver likely has one he|| of a hangover!

AB 2862 - VETOED by the governor

POSTED BY SCOTT: AB 2862 is the much battled and much anticipated bill that originally would have put California pet store management into criminal code, but was amended to be referred to the California Department of Consumer Affairs. The billed then easily passed both the State Assembly and the State Senate.

In the waning hours of the Legislative Year, the Governor vetoed AB 2862 due to �funding� issues. PIJAC's lobbyist, Kevin Pedrotti indicated that he �suspected� that a veto might result inasmuch as the Governor had signed a number of animal bills that did not include funding anywhere near what it would cost to put into effect regulations called for by AB 2862.

This issue is far from dead. Expect 2007 to be a very busy year concerning this type of legislation. Get ready NOW.

JOIN PIJAC. MAKE YOUR VOICE KNOWN.

SUMMER IS HERE AND IT IS HOTTER THAN USUAL!

POSTED BY SCOTT:Man have we been bizzy! Two stores, re-modeling one, keeping up with buying animals, exporting animals for ourselves and our colleagues, feeding a hungry bearded dragon marketplace, trying to keep our website updated, trying to keep our ads at kingsnake.com fresh, and and and... all eat time like there is not tomorrow. Wow what a summer this has been.

The Covina store is already showing growth and it not even remodeled yet! Los Angeles animal control extracted their $250 "inspection fee" for Covina recently. Fortunately, in LA county they give a letter grade to pet stores just like restaurants. Our $250 inspection gave us a 98% grade and a letter "A" in the window! This is a new program in LA County so those of you that live there will start seeing these letters popup all over town. Cannot wait to see what everybody else gets for a letter grade! :) We got graded down for "cobwebs" on the walls. Heck she shoulda been there a month earlier before we tossed pounds of cobwebs from every imaginable corner of the store! There were fixtures that must not have been moved in twenty years or more! Anyway, we'll take the 2 point hit for a few cobwebs we missed. They are gone now.

I wanted to make a Fourth of July post but missed it. Anyways, here is a pic of the window display we did this year.

Back to biz. We have tons of new stuff in the stores. Check out the website for those listed. As of today we have animals in inventory but UNLISTED on the web. Here is a short list: 622 gram (after pooping) '05 Graziani Pastel Ball python, 0.2 8ft+ Blue Beauty Snakes CBB adults, tons of cornsnake varieties (some rare ones too) to many to list if interested call 909.447.5103 to inquire, CBB '05 taupe colored garden phase tree boa, various Veiled Chams babies and adults. As always if you seek that "special something" then it is always a good idea to call and ask. Also, don't forget our notifyme feature. Put in the animal you desire and your email address and you'll get an email any time we add those key words to our website. Make sure to spell it correctly. Use scientific names if you know them, this is more precise common names. Different folks us different common names for the same animal. For instance BRB to many is Brazilian Rainbow Boa to us!

Final thoughts. AB 2862 is back rearing it's ugly head. The California State Senate "Business and Professions" committee is hearing this bill again on Thursday August 10th. PIJAC has published a "call to action" on this bill. They are asking all concerned bodies attend the meeting. I will be there and hope to see many of you too! Here is a link to PIJAC's call to action.

AB 2862 NARROWLY PASSES THRU THE ASSEMBLY

AB 2862 has passed in the Califrnia State Assembly. By a margin of ONE VOTE the bill moves on to the State Senate business and professions committee. This vote took place one day after P I A for animals, the bill's author Mark Ridley-Thomas (MRT), and representatioves for PIJAC sat down to "negotiate" the language of the bill. P I A rejected NO most of PIJAC's input. The next day MRT went onto the Assembly floor and told fellow assemblymembers that he is "negotiating with opposition" in an effort to make the bill passable. I won't call this a lie but certainly the truth was stretched to near it's breaking point.

The bill is now in the Senate business and professions committee. They are due to meet on this matter June 22.

We are making a "grass roots campaign" to get letters and folks to join our coalition against the bill. Click here to see the fact sheet for the bill.

More information found at these links:
AB 2862 - NO!
JOIN THE COALITION!
SEND A LETTER - sample letter, cut and paste into your word processor, format into your original format and wording and fax.

Fax all correspondence to 916-444-0159. PIJAC will make copies in Sacto and hand deliver to all appropriate office. Original letters are VERY IMPORTANT. Join the coalition AND send original letters. Taking the time to send original letters means this measure is very important to you. Prove it by writing a letter.

Once again please fax all correspondence to 916-444-0159.