A few seconds before:
As Mandy pushed Jason into the store, she reviewed the sentence on the phone.
"This store sells an impressive variety of games to visiting customers."
Mandy smiled and swapped out "games" for "pets."
Just as she hit the button to confirm, she overheard one of the boys already in the store checking on her boyfriend.
"Hey man, are yo-SQUAAAWK!"
Mandy looked up to see a beautiful blue-and-yellow macaw perched on the arm of a thin young woman with long black hair. Feeding the bird a treat, she cooed, "Aw, is my baby getting restless? Don't worry, pumpkin, we're almost done." Turning to the employee beside her, a teenage Asian girl with a pleasant but strained expression on her face, she nodded. "We'll take that perch, thank you."
With a brief look of relief, the girl moved around the pair to grab the floor length perch, casting many nervous glances at the macaw. Clearly, despite working around animals all day, she had a fear of birds.
While carrying the perch to the counter for the woman, she passed a large saltwater aquarium where a striped angelfish and a violet colored cichlid swam circles around an intricate figurine of a redheaded mermaid resting on a clamshell. Meanwhile, a cheerful Asian man, probably the teenager's father, rang up the perch while chatting with the macaw owner.
Mandy ignored all this, however. Her attention was focused on the place where her boyfriend once sat. Instead of the shocked young man, there was a lovely three-foot ball python draped over a fake tree setup surrounded by a glass enclosure. Taped to the glass was a sign that said, "Hi, my name is Jade! I'm two years old, and I'm friendly with people. I'm also used to being handled. Please, give me a good home!"