Extraordinary pet stores and the cool animals they keep

I recall now the reason for my visit to Harrods pet department. Around this time when visiting London Zoo I always met a very well to do lady walking her golden cocker spaniel in Regents Park, she reminded me of the actress Elaine Stritch, always about the same time 10am, dog walkers I find always take their dogs for walks about the same time. The male spaniel was a smasher, "His name is Rex because he is a king I was told". Rex had a very nice collar, green leather with golden cocker spaniel studs, I asked the lady where she bought the collar and she informed me Harrods, hence my visit. I looked at the price tag, as I intended to buy two, and put the collar back on display, there were a bit pricey

 

Although I never visited it, wasn't there a well known pet shop in Camden Town London some years ago that sold almost everything?

 

Probably quadruple that now. The animals in most Pet shops are massively over-priced anyway compared to if you by them from private individuals(with fewer overheads) e.g. 'Pets at Home' charge ridiculous prices nowadays for e.g. their GuineaPigs.

 

Palmers Pet Stores. In the main(high) street leading up to Regents Park. Very traditional-style large pet shop with a varied selection of all sorts of animals including (at one time) Monkeys and Parrots. They would have had Puppies in the window in the old days too, I'm sure. Latterly their stock dwindled to the more regulation smaller animals. I'm not sure its even a Pet shop anymore but the b/w lettering with their name and animal motifs may still be over the shop frontage.

 

Pets at Home are getting very expensive for everything,in my town there used to be three privately owned pet shops, two incidentally years ago sold chimps, they have all gone now leaving just Pets at Home to charge what they like, I only go there if I cannot buy what I want at that time anywhere else. I see for some reason they have now stopped selling birds.

 

I'm sure harrods pet shop closed about 2-3 years ago now, it was mainly pedigree dogs that were the last animals sold there.

 

There was also the rather infamous Tylsey's Pet Stores in Birmingham. They at one time had a young Gorilla(Ollie) and an Orangutan. Probably other lesser primates also.

 

I think Harrods Pet department closed only last year. A few years ago it moved from a corner on the 2nd floor to a larger space on the 4th floor. The most exotic animals I saw there in the last 10 years were tortoises and the marine fish.

 

The original Palmers pet shop in Camden Town has been converted into a cafe but the old shop front with the sign reading:-

Monkeys PALMERS Talking Parrots-----Regent Pet Stores PALMERS Naturalists

has been retained.

There is now a smaller shop called Palmers Pet Care on the opposite side of the road although that does not sell live animals.

 

Regarding Harrods, I recall a few years ago reading about Mr. Mohamed Al Fayed stating that he had plans to open a zoo on the roof of the store,what shape or form it would take I do not know, not surprisingly it came to nothing.

 

Amrep in Breda used to be a good Reptile and amphibian shop which alway had a good number of special animals in the 1980-ties.
The most remarkeble animal however I've seen for sell ( at a prize of Euro 7500 ! ( at that time Fl. ( dutch guldens ) 15000 ) was a Chinese giant salamander !

 

Norwegian pet shops are very dull with only a few birds, hamsters, gerbils and occasionally a parrot or chinchilla.
Once, I saw a cuban amazon for sale and some stingrays (and thats about as exotic as you can get - not even reptiles are allowed!), but the parrot was at a price of 350,000 kr.-, extremely expensive.

After having visited Japan, I experienced one pet shop in Yokohama selling all sorts of exotics, it was called Noah Inner City Zoo, with penguins, caracals, servals, capybaras, porcupines and loads more.
I have also seen a mobile zoo where you could buy animals near a ski resort in Hokkaido with penguins, camels, foxes etc.

 

Video of this pet-shop as shown today in german television :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKUFibV61T0&feature=youtu.be

 

I remember seeing a video of a pet store that had Fennec fox, Fruit-eating bat, Meerkat, one crocodilian... I think it's also from Japan, and the conditions were also bad.

 

This is probably on the less extraordinary end of the scale but I know of an Aquarium store that once had a Koi pond (well, actually the owners private Koi pond as it is located right next to the owners house.) I know this isn't much but for people who are restricted to keeping smaller fish like Betas and Goldfish it was a sight.