Discouraging comments!

I was recently a vendor at a local show where I was selling some of my own captive offspring that I produced. The show has a lot of vendors that seem to specialize in morphs of Ball pythons and Gaboon vipers (and the like). I breed geckos exclusively and thus my table was filled with only geckos. Among the geckos were a few Phelsuma klemmeri that were around 3 months of age.

Now if you're unfamiliar with how big a 3 month old klemmeri is, it is quite small! Of course this particular show attracts people who want venomous or pythons and so many of them blew right by my table... and I have no problem with that. I usually don't give tables loaded with ball pythons a second look. What I didn't appreciate was that many people actually walked up to my table and commented on my animals. Comments included "Who would pay $125 for such a sissy animal?" ; "Nothing cool here..." ; "I don't want to buy a gecko because I don't want something small and pathetic."

I would never make a comment like this in front of a vendor when there are other possible customers around. It's ridiculous and I had a hard time with holding comments of my own. If I like an animal and you don't then that's my business.

Sorry I needed to vent.