J&R event rescues owners from poor decisions regarding exotic pet adoptions
Every year, individuals adopt a pet for the prestige or reputation of owning an exotic breed. Soon, however, the novelty wears off and the pet becomes a drain. Resulting frustrations can lead to a negative environment for both human and pet. Such conflicts triggered the Exotic Pet Surrender event. On March 2, from noon to 3 pm, the Coughlin Center held this event for those who cannot take care of their exotic animals any longer. J&R Aquatic Animal Rescue hosted, trying to prevent exotic pets being released into the wild. J&R has been doing this for multiple years and has even more such opportunities planned, specifically 29 more throughout the state.
J&R hopes such surrenders prevent non-native Wisconsin species from being released into the wild, protecting the state’s ecosystem.
“We as a group do the surrender events to help prevent animals from being released into the environment, Renee Schultz, volunteer and surrender event coordinator, said. “This is bad for the environment, and there’s a lack of places to go with exotic animals,”
Community members could surrender an exotic pet, and J&R would willingly take any type of animal such as fish, invertebrates, small mammals, reptiles, birds, and even exotic plants and corals. However, the community could also become educated by hearing stories about taking these animals in and caring for them.
Guests could even learn about some of the crazy species J&R have encountered.
“The things that surprise me are what people think they can keep, and sometimes the police bring us alligators,” Schultz said.
Since Wisconsin has no pet laws, people can end up shipping multiple different animals to homes, such as alligators, monkeys, or any species that isn’t native to Wisconsin. However, areas where people live have specific animal rules about what the tenants can own. Given this law, J&R has gotten multiple different species like beetles, scorpions, ferrets, and more.
J&R will get calls about alligators in lakes about two times a year because of Wisconsin’s loose pet laws.
“Wisconsin does not have a lot of laws governing what animals can be kept. Communities do, but the state itself doesn’t,” Schultz said.
These animals, after being surrendered by the community, do in fact go into adoption after a brief quarantine period and a couple vet check ups. Then the animals will be for sale within J&R’s Fox Crossing location. J&R sells multiple types of animals that come from these events, and one of those animals J&R gets a lot are snakes, specifically ball pythons. Not only do they take these animals in, but J&R ends up transitioning that snake to a frozen and thawed out diet so it’s safer instead of live-fed.
One such ball python, named Doughnut, now acts as an ambassador for these events. Doughnut was found in a storage unit with about 80 other different types of animals, but Doughnut was just an egg at that time when Schultz discovered the storage unit with other people from J&R.
Schultz ended up taking Doughnut’s egg home, where she incubated and hatched the snake.
“We’ve had Doughnut for about a year and a half now; we hatched him out of an egg and now he’s one of our ambassadors for these events,” Schultz said.
Throughout the years, these exotic pet surrender events have saved Wisconsin from invasive species, and even saved the pets’ lives.
J&R sponsors help take care of these surrender events, and the community can even surrender an animal outside one of these events if necessary.
“Our center is open Tuesday to Saturday, 4 to 6, animals can be bought there, we’re not going to be upset that you have the animal, we are just going to take it, rehabilitate it and rehome it,” Schultz said.
by Kayden Brandt
Published April 1 2024
Oshkosh West Index volume 120 issue VI