Having failed to find any aquarium plants that tickled my fancy at Forest Wonders I decided to continue down the street to find Pet Supplies Plus which is a larger store – a chain store – though I think one that might be locally owned (but don’t quote me on that.)

Walking in it looked more or less like PetCo or Petsmart – big, open, a sort of Wal-Mart for pets, though I don’t know about the pricing! There were a few cashiers and one of them warmly greeted me as I came in. I went straight for the fish isle which was labelled critters for some reason. They had a nice assortment of tanks, especially ones on the smaller side. At the end were the bettas. Just a handful, all looking as pitiful as bettas in little plastic tubs always do. There was one really small one for five bucks. He looked half dead but then again that’s how they normally look in these places. I talked myself out of it. I don’t have the right set up for a betta. Next to the bettas was two small tubs of plants. One read cryptically, “assorted plants” and had only one dried up brown plant in it. Aquarium tumbleweed? The other tub was java moss and looked almost as bad.

Within the fish department there were rows of tanks with the usual assortment of glo fish and whatnot. One tank had a few plants in it. $7 for a little pot of dwarf baby tears actually was a super decent price. Too bad the plant itself was yellow as fuck and I didn’t feel like I knew enough about rescuing plants to bring it back to life. Not yet anyway. Seems I struck out once again.

I stayed a little longer only to see what they had for critters – a furless guinea pig, two ferrets, and some miscellaneous fuzz that were probably hamsters – before leaving. The staff flagged me down again and asked if I needed help.

“No, I’m good, but thank you!” I smiled. At least the personnel here were super friendly. I give them that!