I mean, how odd was that? I felt so bad for the otter stuck in that pet shop. Were otters really sold in pet shops at one time in England?
shareI saw a documentary about a guy in London who bought a tiger or some other exotic large cat from a pat store. This was also in the 60s. Apparently, this stuff went on then.
shareWell, in the 1960's there were still rather unenlightened practices regarding animals and what you could sell in a pet shop, yes. I never heard about otters, but I did hear about the lion cub bought from Harrods department store, as the other poster mentions.
In my local pet shop they also had mynah birds in cages, and you could buy baby tortoises. Later on of course, it became known how cruel the importing of those tortoises were, take from the wild in exotic locations, crammed into crates and put on long journeys where most of them wound up dead. We didn't know about that side of things at the time.
The otter in the pet shop -- back then people didn't even think about how cruel that was either. They know better now, although there is still a lot of questionable activity regarding puppy mills supplying pet shops, etc.
Just for the record, I'm female...
^Yes, I read the book about Christian the lion cub.
Does anyone know if there are puppy mills in the UK like we have here in America?
I just did a quick Google search, and it appears that yes, there are puppy mills in the UK too, sadly, who supply animals to pet shops.
There are probably also unethical private breeders as well -- sadly it seems that whenever an animal can be exploited for profit, humans are the same wherever you go.
Just for the record, I'm female...
^Those people should be banned for life from having any contact with animals. Here in the northeast, the Amish are the worst people for puppy mills.
share
Don't forget the film version of "Ring of Bright Water" was only loosely based on the true story, as told in the book of the same name.
In real life, Gavin Maxwell was given the otter "Mijbil" as a gift, while he was visiting the marsh Arabs in Iraq. This is mentioned in the epilogue to his previous book "A Reed Shaken by the Wind."