Experience with reptile seller in Libya

[Swaggomancer]

Today I had a weird/bad encounter with a shopkeeper here in Tripoli, and I kinda want to vent my feelings a bit.

Basically, there are shops here in Libya which sell reptiles to be killed and used for traditional medicine. The reptiles are kept in pretty tight environments and in abysmal conditions. Even though I hate that they are taking advantage of the desperate and the ignorant (their main customer demographic), I often visit one of these shops just to get a feel for the native herpetofauna, and to have a closer look at the specimens.

A few weeks ago, on one of my visits, I noticed that they were keeping some Psammophis schokari. I was with my old man, and I told him "These guys aren't gonna last long in bottles like this, they need some UV light and they get stressed easy." Sure enough, fast forward to today, and there isn't a single Psammophis to be seen except for one dead one in a bottle, and it probably died recently or I think they'd have removed it.

We, me and my dad, continue looking around. Eventually I see a colubrid in a bottle that I can't recognize (calling me a layman in herpetology would be far too generous) and I just kinda pick up the bottle and rotate it a bit, in the hope that I can get a better look through the foggy plastic. One shopkeeper sees this and is somewhat surprised, so he comes over and asks us if we need anything. My dad just asks him what it is and he goes "its a snake." Before my dad can start banging his head into a wall, the guy asks what we need and I tell him that I'm just looking around. He just walked back to continue his smoke after that.

Anyways, later on my conscience starts acting up and I decide to tell the guy about the Psammophis and why it might have died. Now, I'm pretty introverted and scared of people I don't know, so it took quite a bit of effort to walk back to that scary shopkeeper, with his big mustache and cigarette. Still, I manage and I just kind of go up to him like:

"Hello! Are you responsible for those snakes over there?"
"Hmmm..."*he points to one of the other shopkeepers* "Hey! Go help the customer out."
And I'm like "Err, no, I don't want to buy anything...Ummm, one of those snakes in the bottles is dead and I...Uhhh...Those types of snakes need some..."
*the man stares at me super intense-like*
"...I, Uhhh...they need UV light....or, uhh, they don't really last long."

After that, he just continued to stare at me before nodding me away without saying a word. Like, if "f*** off" could take the form of a stare. I somehow kinda felt like I offended him or something. It might have been the fact that my Arabic isn't exactly perfectly fluent, and I tend to jumble when I'm anxious (you know, like when someone tries to melt my brain with his eyeballs) but I thought I'd gotten my message through. I mean, I think the warning signs were all there - the tortoises piled on top of each other, the tightly packed chameleons, and the bottled snakes, the lack of knowledge about reptiles, as well as the shady **** that they do with them - these guys clearly don't give a ****. I just wasn't expecting that sort of response. I'm pretty sure that I'd just spent too much time around normal people who give a damn and I kinda forgot where I was. Won't happen again.

Maybe this is just my paranoia kicking in, maybe I misinterpreted the guy's silent stare. But that guy made me feel hella uncomfortable. I wanted to bury my head in the ground so bad. This is the last time I visit them, I think. I sure as hell will never buy anything else from them (I have two toads I got from them previously). I'm pretty sure I know why snakes aren't popular in Libya, with that sort of attitude.

On another note, I think it is a blessing - seeing how the pet trade has played a huge part in damaging the reptile populations in neighboring countries. There is no such demand for them here and most reptiles seem to be doing kinda OK. This means that, if I do ever get into snake keeping, I will need to be very careful. There are no regulations on reptiles and, even if some were made, I doubt anyone would enforce them. The last thing I want to do is trigger the wrong sort of demand, where people just start frenziedly collecting wild reptiles.

[sattva]

I am so sorry that a young man as yourself had such a bad experience with your shopkeeper... Unfortunately different parts of the world value life differently... I have always said that if it weren't for man the cow would probably be extinct... In India they are revered and where I live! Well we eat them... and the slaughter houses are pretty grim...
It would be way cool if you could start a collection and educate some people... Don't get your hope's to high... It takes years to make these kind of changes but someone should start it... The worst that can happen is you would end up with a way cool hobby and a whole bunch of new friends...

[bigsnakegirl785]

Sometimes we all need a good vent, and I'm sure most of us on this forum side with you on this issue. Unfortunately it will take more than telling a medicine shop proper snake husbandry to get the state of things to change, you've got to work to erase the demand. I've seen stories of other people working to educate others about snakes in other parts of Africa, so you're not alone in this fight. I just feel sorry for the snakes in such shops in the meantime.

[Swaggomancer]

Thanks y'all. I honestly just needed to get that out there.

I'll just try and be optimistic - both my parents gave me different perspectives, and they are usually right.
My mom thought that he was just confused as he was probably never approached on this subject before, in this manner. My dad suggested that, to the shopkeeper, maybe I was the a$$hole. Some relatively well off kid with an English background who, instead of using snakes for their rightful purpose as a "heal all" sort of medicine, wastes valuable time and money on them for fun. The horror! On top of that, the english kid comes to lecture him with his terrible Libyan!

Either way, I'm sure I could have handled it better if I was a tad more charismatic, which I'm not. Ah well.

[MartinD]

I'm very sorry you had a bad experience, but well done you, we need more people like you to stand up and educate people about reptiles.

It would be a shame that reptiles become extinct because of the beliefs of myths in medicine, just take a look at whats happening to the world most beautiful animal the Tiger, so what will the Chinese turn to when they have killed off all the tigers.