Hewitt Reptile Emporium

06/24/2024

Sunshine our retic out for a stroll 😁

05/21/2024

Love is in the air 💕

05/20/2024

Toothless has awaken! He will be out walking around the shop part of the day through spring and summer!

05/07/2024

Ball python tanks all set up for our delivery of NEW ball pythons tomorrow 🙌 😀

We also have Leucistic Colombian Rainbow Boas & Albino Colombian Rainbow Boas in shop ❤️

04/19/2024

We have new tarantulas available!

04/13/2024

We have lots of ready to eat fruit flies!

04/08/2024

Holy salad bowls! Lunch here today is looking good. Cactus and cantaloupe added to our daily salads. Tommy the tortoise approves.

03/30/2024

We have a Herman's tortoise available for adoption. Please call the shop for more info 😊

03/30/2024

We have a blue tongue skink surrender that came in without UVB :( We are asking a small adoption fee to find this guy his new home. Please call the shop if you're interested at 4253225025.

Also please say Hi to Forrest who has been hard at work on our new floors!

03/25/2024

We have Red Eyed Tree Frogs! Come check out these cuties.

03/10/2024

We have Ackie Monitors! Locally bred

03/04/2024

EXCITING NEWS! we are getting new floors at the shop! Please excuse our appearance while we are under construction 😊 Store hours this week:
Monday-Thursday 10am-7pm (we will be closing 1 hour early)
Friday-Sunday 10am-8pm (normal business hours)

02/27/2024

New Arrivals!
Anery sand boa, Cosala sinaloan milk snake, Kenyan sand boa, Amelanistic brooks king snake

02/24/2024

We have Colombian Rainbow Boas & Brazilian Rainbow Boas back in the shop!

02/21/2024

New Tarantulas are here! And upgrades on current Tarantulas. Come check them out!

02/20/2024

Back by Popular Demand! New Exoterra tanks now available! Please call the shop for more information 😊

02/15/2024

We have a new shipment of springtails and isopods!

02/08/2024

Calci worms are back in stock!

01/29/2024

Hey Friends and Family,

At this point you may or may not have seen a post from a disgruntled ex-employee so I figured I'd take the time to address it as follows:

Thank you all for the concern regarding our animal care and the level of professionalism within the shop. We have a duty to our customers to provide them with a high quality of both goods and services, which we pride ourselves on. In regards to animal care, we have an ongoing relationship with animal control and we are considered the leading authority when they do not have a safe spot to rehome reptiles. There is a reason the police department has shown up to my home address in the middle of the night with reptiles that are in need of care, and it's due to my knowledge within the hobby and my love for reptiles. Animal control is in the shop frequently to discuss animals that have been surrendered to them and I have never once had them tell me that my level of care was inadequate. To have a disgruntled employee who was fired for ethical violations and general poor behavior (providing medical advice without a license, as well as slandering the business to customers). It is our duty to provide these animals with care and I pride myself on the level of care we do give them. What people don't see are the days like Christmas where the shop is closed and I personally go in to make sure that animals are cared for. When the power goes out, I'm the one going to the shop in the middle of the night to run the generators hours at a time so that the animals have heat. I don't expect my employees to be at my beck and call, however I do expect a certain level of professionalism in my place of business. This was not met and the employee was terminated for failure to uphold those standards. In their posts they go on to highlight a few animals that had issues, however they were only telling a fraction of each of their stories. I plan to detail each of the animals' unique circumstances, once I've had time to review the pictures and their captions. Thank you to all the customers who have counted on me for the last 10 years and trusted my level of care, professionalism, and knowledge in the field. I appreciate all of you and I look forward to many more years serving you.

01/29/2024

It was brought to my attention that a former employee has shared photos with misleading or completely made up captions. This is our account of all alleged abuse. Thank you for bearing with the long post!

Larry the Sunglow boa: It was brought to my attention that Larry had a respiratory infection via the pictures sent to me. I directed my staff to bathe her and get the substrate out of her mouth, as well as clearing out her mouth of extra saliva. The bathing was also because she was deep in-shed, and I felt that that was adding to her difficulty breathing. In the meantime, I set up a vet appointment for Larry with Dr Bennet of Seattle Bird And Exotic. During this time I noticed Larry's mouth looking much better, and all the vet staff were delighted to see her. She had a healthy weight on her despite the respiratory infection. I had high hopes of recovery since there was no sign of Pneumonia and the respiratory infection was caught pretty quickly. Unfortunately Larry passed away suddenly before finishing her course of medication. Obviously this was very upsetting to all my staff and myself included. I told the ex employee about it right away as I knew she was invested, but apparently she misheard me and did not realize Larry had passed. It was a few days later that she asked where Larry was and I explained again that she passed away.

During this time, I also had a Corn snake who was surrendered to me. When talking with the family via email, they said she was very healthy, a good eater and just needed a home who could enjoy her more. I noticed she had a bulge in her lower abdomen which appeared to be constipation. She was put on our hospital care board and given baths daily to help her pass stool. When that didn't resolve the issue, I took her to Dr Bennet at Seattle Bird and Exotic, who I have been working with for the past 4 years. She recommended surgery in order to prevent a prolapse so I followed her recommendations and we did just that. Dr Bennet is a wonderful Veterinarian and she did everything she could for our corn snake. Unfortunately she passed away a few days later. I was well aware that she had a 50/50 chance of making it through that surgery, but it was the only chance she had, so I took it.

Baby bearded dragons: Over the course of the holiday season. We purchased around 20 baby bearded dragons. 2 of the 20 were considered "failure to thrive" which we noticed pretty quickly after receiving them (separate occasions). In both cases we followed our company protocol. Where they were placed in our quiet backroom away from the boister and blunder of our front of house. NOT because they were banished to die like accused. Both dragons received special care where they were syringe fed carnivore care and water daily, and offered a variety of bugs and greens to get them eating on their own again. Many times we are able to get our little guys eating and back on the path to thriving, but unfortunately this wasn't the case for either dragon mentioned. The 3rd dragon developed Gout which there is no course of treatment for. There is nothing that any vet could have done to help these dragons, that we were not already doing.

Lita The Bolivian Silverback Boa,
Our long term resident and beloved Problem child:
Over the course of a few years, I have spent around 3 thousand dollars on Lita's veterinary care. A few years back she had a feeding accident and struck the side of her enclosure while aiming for a frozen thawed large rat. She then continued to reopen the wound on her face despite our best efforts to stop her. Anytime she would go into-shed, she would reopen the same wound. My exotics vet with Broadway Animal Hospital saw her on multiple occasions to do with this wound and we brainstormed ways to help her heal. Every time Lita seemed to be on the road to recovery, she would rub and reopen the wound again. We treated her wound for a year every single day with Nolvisan( to disinfect the area) and dental gel to help the healing process per my vets recommendation. Eventually I contacted The Seattle Bird And Exotic to help with the surgery to fix her face when my previous vet stopped seeing exotics. Over the past 3 months, Lita had stopped eating for us. We took her again to Seattle Bird and Exotic for care, where we put her on a course of medications. She never started eating again and we knew her time with us was limited. However, she seemed to be herself and fully healed from her prior injury. We decided to stop further treatment, and let her live out the rest of her days in peace. Despite what the accused has said, 2 of my staff members knew of my plans to have Lita euthanized this month, and her appointment for that was already set in place before any accusations were made.

The ex employee has made it clear that they never intended to be a part of our team, that they were only looking for a reason to make themselves look good while trying to speak on animals they had NO knowledge of or background information on.

Boarder Bearded Dragon: We had an adult male bearded dragon enter into our care in the middle of December for our boarding services. This was a well established dragon who was in brumation (reptile hibernation) when we received him. He was a healthy weight when he came in and I had no concerns with him. December is a common time for bearded dragons to brumate (reptile hibernation) so it was not out of the ordinary for him to go off feed. We had him in our care for 5 days. He passed away overnight and we notified the owners who were regular customers for the past 6 years, of what had happened. They understood that there was nothing we could have done in 5 days that would take out a fully grown adult bearded dragon. He in no way starved to death. Our shop is heated to 75 degrees at night and he had a basking spot of 95 degrees during the day along with uvb.

Our crested geckos- Our crested gecko pictured was one of our breeders that the ex employee sent to me and exclaimed how cute she was! Its funny that now they are trying to point the finger saying she's obese and that we overbreed our crested geckos. What's even funnier is the employee was only with the shop for 3 months and had no knowledge of our breeding cycle. We actually have both our breeder males separate from our females, and have for the past 7 months as we have plenty of crested gecko babies. You can stop by the shop anytime and see them! They are Indigo and Cashew.

Ralphie the Red tail boa/Ex employees boa/saying he was housed in too small of an enclosure:
Ralphie came in as a surrender from someone who was moving and could no longer take him. We get a lot of these emails where the snake is starting to outgrow their enclosure and they can no longer care for them. I consider us the last resort. If we don't take them, they could end up on craigslist or with an inexperienced keeper. Even if the enclosure is slightly small, we are the best option for many of these larger snakes. You can see in the picture how healthy Ralphie is. This is due to the care that my shop provided. When my ex employee stated they wanted Ralphie, I was happy to help them and set them up with a really good deal on a brand new enclosure for him. I do however want to state that this enclosure was not much bigger than what he was in at my shop.

If you have any other concerns you can feel free to reach out to me via email @ [email protected]

01/25/2024

Attention crested geckos! Tell your people we got a new shipment of Pangea! Flavors include Fig and insect, papaya, watermelon, fruit and insect, and apricot.

01/21/2024

Big Chungus hopes everyone had a fantastic weekend!

01/20/2024

Some of the critters in the shop right now!

01/17/2024

Update!

We are closing again at 6pm tonight.

We will be closing at 6pm tonight so everyone can get gome safely.

01/15/2024

We are OPEN tomorrow regular hours. There may be a lunch hour where we will be closed between 1pm and 2pm, sorry for that inconvenience. Aside from that we will be open from 10am until 8pm. Have a great day!

01/08/2024

We have NEW lower prices on many of our feeder insects! This includes 55 count crickets, 150 count crickets, Hornworm cups, Butterworms, Calci Worms, and 100 count King Worms. We did not raise ANY of our prices this year on live or frozen rodents 🫶😊

Thank You for your continued support! We will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year!

We have one of the best selections of reptiles and amphibians in the area

01/08/2024

We have lots of baby bearded dragons and different morphs. They are so cute!

01/04/2024

We have a new shipment of Springtails and Isopods.

I also have other exciting news to announce SOON!

12/18/2023

Some of our current animals looking for new homes!

12/15/2023

Some of the critters in the shop right now. Come meet them today!