Business & Tech

Bye, Bye Baby — Pet Safari Owner, Sloths Begin New Chapter

Dunedin pet shop owner Larry Lipke plans to be out of the building no later than Aug. 21.

Larry Lipke's failed negotiations with a landlord is what's ultimately pushing him to close the doors of his Main Street pet shop, a Dunedin fixture.

When the bank turned down his proposal to reduce his rent in the spring, Lipke saw it as God's way of putting a "punctuation mark" on the end of a nearly three-decade run for Pet Safari, the city's only neighborhood pet shop.

Glancing at the shop's emptying shelves Wednesday, it was hard for Lipke not to remember when life filled the shelves and business was good.

It's a depressing scene. Loyal patrons, some with tear-filled eyes, are buying animal posters off the windows, striking deals for used critter cages and stocking up on the last bit of bird seed before they can't get it anymore.

Lipke's agouti paca and famed two-toed sloths — Baby, Blondie and Scarface — were sold to Promised Land Zoo near Branson, MO, about a month ago. 

"They couldn't have gone to a better home," Lipke said Wednesday inside his office at Pet Safari.

He said the zoo built a new habitat with similar dimensions as their Dunedin home just for Baby, Blondie and Scarface, adult sloths rescued after their habitat was destroyed in Guyana. Zoo officials also intended to keep the agouti paca, a large, solitary rodent typically found in South America, together with its sloth friends just as it lived in Dunedin, Lipke said. But he's not sure if that's still the case.

Although considered a rare feat, Lipke was able to breed his beloved sloth pets in captivity in the shop. Females Baby and Blondie mothered at least four sloths in recent years. One sloth baby even appeared on famed anchor Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show "Anderson" in 2011.

Most recently, Baby, the mother sloth, became a mother yet again, giving birth just a few weeks ago in her new Branson home. 

Promised Land Zoo officials had hoped to surprise Lipke with the news during an anticipated in-person visit. But Lipke's travel plans are taking a back seat to closing his longtime business. His lease negotiations with the most recent property owner, a bank, were not successful, he said.

Zoo officials in Branson texted him Wednesday with an extended invitation to see his "babies." They said they would gladly pick Lipke up from the airport.

Lipke left his job as a Christian school teacher to follow his childhood dream of owning a pet store roughly 28 years ago. He wanted to teach people to love and respect animals, a passion that emanated through his business and interactions with customers and animals. He was actually the unofficial midwife for many of Baby's and Blondie's pregnancies.

Over the decades, Lipke watched many of his employees grow up and become regular patrons, clipped an estimated 5,000 bird wings, and found new homes for pets whose owners could no longer care for them. 

Since learning of Pet Safari's closing, many longtime customers have come in with tears in their eyes and words of encouragement for Lipke and George Talmage, the store manager.

The two have worked side by side for nearly 13 years. They traded friendly, sarcastic jabs at one another Wednesday afternoon.

They're planning to spend their upcoming free time as fishing buddies.

Lipke hopes to have the store cleared of merchandise, animals and empty cages by early next week. His absolute last day on the premises is Aug. 21, but he hopes to be out sooner.

In the meantime, Lipke said he's waiting for God to show him the next open door.

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