VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) – The king of the jungle is hanging up his vines.
Bob Hames says 39 years of owning and running the massive and unusual pet store Animal Jungle is enough. In the next four to six weeks, he said, he’s closing his doors at Holland Road and South Plaza Trail.
“A, I’m tired,” Hames said. Then there’s the way the market has changed, with competition from big-box pet stores and Internet sites. Hames said his two children aren’t interested in taking over the store, and he doesn’t want to sell it.
“This is a lot to take care of,” he said. “I grew into a store this size over 39 years.”
Hames started Animal Jungle at Pembroke Mall in 1976 when he was 20 years old. He had been an aquarium hobbyist since he was 10.
From the start, the store’s primary focus was aquatics. Hames said he traveled to Florida more than a dozen times a year to buy fish directly from commercial farms. It got him good pricing and a selection few other stores could boast, he said.
Today, the store on Holland Road has 40 to 45 employees, 26,000 square feet of floor space, 35,000 gallons of aquarium water and big selections of reptiles, small animals and birds.
It also has a few “display” animals, including Flapjack the stingray, Cookie the hyacinth macaw and Mikeeto the serval, an African cat that was born and raised by a private breeder in North Carolina.
He plans to find places for all of them. A staff member is planning to take Flapjack, and a few longtime customers are interested in Cookie. The Virginia Zoo in Norfolk is interested in taking Mikeeto and, if that doesn’t work out, Hames said he might take her to a cat rescue in Florida. She can’t legally be sold in Virginia to anyone who doesn’t have a special permit.
“I’m not taking any animal to the SPCA,” he said. “We have a moral obligation to find homes for all of our animals.”
The store announced the closing Dec. 18 on Facebook and said all inventory is 35 percent off. Nearly 300 people had commented on the post by the next day, lamenting the store’s close and sharing memories.
Chuck Doud was one of them. He said he started bringing his children to Animal Jungle years ago when they were 1 and 2, back when he had little money for entertainment. They’d feed the koi fish and maybe hold a cockatiel, and eventually got their first hermit crabs and betta fish there.
“I’m just heartbroken,” Doud said over the phone. “It’s such a shame, too, that an independent store like that doesn’t seem to be able to survive anymore.”
Bob Claffy said that when he was 14 and the store was at Pembroke Mall, Hames let him clean hamster cages in exchange for fish and fish food. Today Claffy has 30 to 40 aquariums.
“That shop is not like a normal pet shop,” he said. “It’s iconic on the East Coast…. For the hobbyists in Hampton Roads, that store and those people will be sorely missed.”
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Va. Beach pet store closing after 39 years
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