Fancy's Pets has taken its prairie dogs - including main man Bubba - out of the store's limelight until the monkeypox scare is over.
By RICHARD RAEKE
Published June 13, 2003
[Times photo: Stephen Coddington]
Prairie dogs at Fancy Pets in Crystal River were removed to a backroom Thursday afternoon. Though the store's owner said they had not been notified by state agencies to stop selling the animals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta banned the sale of the pets Wednesday.
CRYSTAL RIVER - Thursday morning, Fancy Taylor had all her prairie dogs near the doorway at her store, Fancy's Pets. Three played in wood shavings and PVC pipe joints and crawled on the wire mesh. Another, Bubba, sat in a separate cage as Taylor and customers scratched under his chin.
Bubba is the store's mascot - he's not for sale. And by Thursday afternoon, neither were the three other prairie dogs.
Taylor took them off the market and moved them to the back of the store in reaction to the recent monkeypox scare.
"As of yet, we have not been notified by the Florida Department of Health, (the) Fish and Wildlife (Conservation Commission), or the Agriculture Department to quarantine our prairie dogs," Taylor said in a prepared statement that she issued Thursday afternoon. "However, as responsible business owners, we are placing all prairie dogs on hold and isolation for the safety of our employees, customers and other animals."
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has banned the sale of prairie dogs and six other species.
During an interview earlier in the day, Taylor said she has sold dozens of prairie dogs over the years. She charges $129.99 for a pup. In the rear of the store, she keeps an enlarged photo and a plaque memorializing Jack, the store's former mascot, who lived to the relatively ripe-old-prairie-dog age of 7.
She bought her current stock of pups three months ago from PMS Recycled Vermin of Lubbock, Texas.
Prairie dogs distributed by Phil's Pocket Pets of Villa Park, Ill., are thought to be responsible for nine cases of monkeypox in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Monkeypox, a less potent cousin of smallpox, produces pus-filled blisters, rashes, fever, chills and aches. It has a mortality rate of one to 10 percent in Africa, where it originates.
Thursday, CDC officials believed they had discovered the first case of human-to-human transmission in Wisconsin, according to news reports.
Officials from the Florida Department of Health were awaiting test results from some Sarasota residents who owned prairie dogs and had displayed rashes, said Lindsay Hodges, spokeswoman for the agency.
Hodges said the state Department of Health and the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services had located three raccoons in the Panhandle handled by the same distributor as the infected prairie dogs. They show no signs of infection and are being monitored, she said.
Terrance McElroy, spokesman for the state agriculture department, said his agency was contacting pet store owners through their trade associations.
Without a word from officials, Taylor took the precaution anyway.
"Instead of them making us do it, we decided to do it," she said. "I just don't want them to be confiscated. I figure that's the only way we can keep them."
