Yukkuri Pet Shop

A potential owner looking through the selection of yukkuri.

As the name might suggest, a Yukkuri Pet Shop is a shop that deals in yukkuris and yukkuri products, and at time other animal and animal-related products. Seen in many stories and drawings, they're the equivalent of real world pet shop, giving prospective owners the full assistance needed with their Pet Yukkuris or help with the abuse of yukkuri.

General

A potential owner looking at a selection of aquatic yukkuri.

Pet Shops come in many forms, from small "mom-and-pop" shops that cater to yukkuri goods to large franchises owned by the factory or other corporation. Yukkuri Pet Shops (those that only cater to yukkuri) often price their yukkuri according to "grade," along with the Badges system, where yukkuris intended for keeping as companions or pets are the most expensive, but still cheaper than conventional pets due to the fast breeding rate of yukkuri. Yukkuris intended as livestock, food for predatory Yukkuri or "defective" (ill, weak, with damaged accessory) are often sold for a lower price.

Pet Yukkuris are said to be of the highest grade, and are normally trained/conditioned to be obedient and less selfish than wild ones, often by trained personnel and adult yukkuris directly in the shop. Furthermore, due to the high number of "defective" and "livestock" yukkuri among the regular ones, Pet Shops may sell "new" accessories to owners who want to "fix" a yukkuri with a damaged accessory. The accessory are often harvested in the same shop.

Another "secondary" product sold in Pet Shops are additional Stalks, for consumption uses, taken from livestock yukkuris.

Structure and selling strategies

Knowing fully well that customers don't have all day to stand around, many pet shops have a system that allow curious owners to view nice yukkuri while those who know what they want can easily find it. As such, most Yukkuri Pet Shops will put rare/platinum and golden badged koyukkuris in the best cages, placed near the entrance thus allowing customers to interact with them and be smitten with the cute, well-behaved and innocent looking pets. Going further towards the back of the shop, the next cages are occupied by silver badged koyukkuris and, entire families with adult yukkuris; since most customers prefer to train and buy only koyukkuris, usually silver badged individuals and below have a somewhat limited shelf life, being returned to the Factory and breeders when they hit adulthood. As such, while still made able to interact with customers and still marketable, they're not seen fit to lure customers in. However, if they manage somehow to "plead their case" and get bought, they're safe from being sent back or killed.

Any example of the "luck of the draw". While there are many misbehaving yukkuri in these cages, there are also a few nice ones.

Further inside the Yukkuri Pet Shop, there are the Bronze Badge: bronze badge cages and beyond are isolated from the "kinder" stock and located usually behind rows of merchandise. While gold and silver badge are seated in nice looking, clean cages, allowing customers to speak and see them playing and cheerfully hopping around, bronze badges are cooped up in small pens, all close together, with the most untrained ones usually yelling at the top of their lungs, but unable to bother other yukkuris.

Other shops may keep very small koyukkuris, especially the premature ones, still unable to speak clearly and be much a bother, in small boxes where they're free just to jump and pounce together around; as bronze yukkuri are meant as budget products or for kids who could afford them by tapping on their allowance, they're just meant to be cheap and somewhat healthy, and may be noisy and unruly. Even so, the closeness to the predatory-type cages allows to quiet them down.

Mini-yus in a tank (notice the price tag of 50 yen). Unlike more expensive pets, these mini-yus (unbadged) are allowed to roam free and do as they please. Notice the Marsia in the background bullying a Reimu.

Past the bronze-badged yukkuris,there are the no-badge cages, little more than crates, unlike the at least proper cages of the bronze badge ones, filled with squirming, oblivious koyukkuris. In an example of "luck of the draw", the crates can hold quarrelsome and nice, shitheads and niceheads, bothersome and polite koyukkuris. This allows customers with heavy budget constraints to get a blank-slate pet and try to train it personally. Abusive anons also pick from this crate, given that the koyukkuri are cheap and easy to replace. Further even beyond the no-badges and located in the way back, there are livestock yukkuris and kos, placed in containers and sold by weight. Unsuitable for training, they're scooped with a tap, plastic bags and gloves and sold for consumption by predatory types and snakes, divided by type. Most costumers aren't allowed access to this area.

The last cages a customer can see are usually given to defective inviduals; damaged, injured yukkuris with broken accessories, or returned ones, often prone to fit of anti-yukkuritis. Most end up dying, with the returned yukkuri being picked over the injured ones.

To keep the yukkuri in line, store owners may allow trained predatory types, such as Flans and Reimilas, to fly around and be observed or even played with by the customer. Most of the time, these yukkuris are the owner's pets but other times they are up for purchase. When not needing to settle yukkuri down, they can be found perched around the store, watching the costumers and making sure no yukkuri gets overwhelming (see below). As a general rule, Predatory-types aren't allowed to eat gold and silver badges, and are usually fed with the most unruly bronze and no-badge individuals.

Behind the counter, or in other corridors, the shopkeepers and shop assistants keep steady supplies of pet food, replacement accessories, Yukkuri Clothes, and Yukkuri toys. Also, some Pet Shops may have a small laboratory, to fit yukkuris in some special products, such as Yukkuri Clocks or Piko Piko Balls.

Counterfeits and modifications

Pet Shops may offer some "modifications" to Pet Yukkuris, much like some pet shop used to crop ears and tails from dog, such as plugging up the anyaru and the pee hole of Mini-yukkuris to sell them as talking phone straps, or perform first aid and direct the owner to a veterinarian if the need arises.

Another fad leading to undue "modifications" to Pet Yukkuris is the phenomenon of "Aquatic Yukkuris". While the only known Aquatic races are the Shelled and Aquatic variations of Yukkuri Marisa and Yukkuri Nitori, the high demand for them has pushed some unscrupulous Pet Shops to commercialize counterfeit yukkuris, as "Normal" Marisas forced to to float on their hats and sold as the Aquatic breed, or stripped of their hats and given a normal conch shell, and Yukkuri Reimus given fake, waterproof ribbons to "make up" for the Aquatic Reimu's rarity. These counterfeits have a tragically short life, as, even if they don't fall in water from their fake and/or worn out accessories, they're bound to develop anti-yukkuritis because of the unnatural condition they're forced to bear.

However, to "make up" for those radical flaws, counterfeit yukkuris are usually sold at a lowest price than their more fortunate brethren, much as livestock, food grade and "torture" yukkuris.

Non-Yukkuri merchandise

Yukkuri Pet Shops are known to sell several items meant to help into Yukkuri Care, much like regular pet shops would. Unlike regular pet stores, however, many pet shops also cater to the abusive crowed with the general rule of not allowing the abuser to mention their plan as to not scare away customers.

Among the sold products there are:

• Yukkuri Castration Kits: a DIY solution to prevent unwanted pregnancies between yukkuris.
• Yukkurariums: ranging from small cages to furnished plexigrass tanks, they're solution to hold and keep yukkuris in safety
• Yukkuri Chow: food suited for yukkuri consumption. It may range from pellets to wet food, and it's usually blander and less tastier than sweets, thus allowing the owner to feed yukkuris without having them grow up spoiled and unwilling to taste anything but sweets
• Replacement Accessories: while in the wild a Yukkuri with a damaged accessory is bound to die of anti-yukkuritis and face the repulsion of its brethren, a pet yukkuri can always receive a replacement accessory, often taken from food grade and damaged individuals, but before it starts to carry the "death stench" that make stolen accessories unwanted by yukkuri. A complex code allows the shop keeper to match accessories with age and type
• Yukkuri toys: a complete selection of toys for koyukkuris and adults yukkiri alike, the bulk of which is composed by the "Yukkuri Dolls", life-sized reproduction of yukkuris and koyukkuris, able to stifle loneliness in pets
• Clothing: Entire lines full of clothing to either protect the yukkuri from the elements, or just make them look pretty.
• Abuse accessories: an entire line of accessories catered to make yukkuri lives the most miserable possible. Ranging from yukkurariums fitted with sandpaper, injuring their feet whenever they hop or crawl, to replacement accessories that already took the "death stench" that hurts yukkuris so much. Other accessories may include electric swatters, capsicin-based pellets and yukkuri dolls designed to puff puff or harass Yukkuris at every occasion.

Petshop Gallery

Different petshops in works

Two koyukkuri on their way to be registered as pets pass by some badged yukkuri, going for some hefty prices.

A cage with crying Reimus. Underneath is the pricing along with ways one can torture the yukkuri if they choose.

Multiple Yukkuri being offered for sale. Due to the antics of these yukkuri (compared with the first image of the "proper" yukkuri in the gallery), they are priced very cheaply.

Cursing Yukkuri

A rather unorthodox problem most stores face are the ruder yukkuri. Despite yukkuri having a simple mindset, it is not at all uncommon for a yukkuri to sprout out profanity. While not so much an issue with silver and gold badge yukkuri, bronze and badge-less yukkuri are very troublesome in the regards that they are the ones to swear the most and are much more likely to attract children on a budget. Not wanting to deal with angry parents and lose customers, most store employees must be on guard 24/7 for any swearing yukkuri. Every day, or at least once every few days, the more crude yukkuri are taken from their pens and are normally stripped of their accessory and then fed to the predatory types, outright killed and tossed, or (in more crueler twists) they are ground up to feed their brethren. Some more meaner owners may toss the accessory-less yukkuri back to its peers, who will likely kill and possibly consume the other.

Even with the above method, cursing yukkuri are know to slip through the cracks, so employees must take care to transverse the aisles of cages when children are about. Any yukkuri caught swearing or making rude remarks are plucked from their cages and brought to the back of the store to receive their grueling fate. If asked by a child on what is going to happen to the yukkuri, the employee will usually make up a lie on how the yukkuri is "sick" or "needs some caring". The employee will then divert the child to the kinder stock.