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Anyone Have An Exotic Animal As A Pet?

The average person who is an animal lover are accustom to pets such as dogs, cats, fish, birds or maybe hamster.

For those that live on a farm or rural areas they may have pigs, cows, horses, chickens, or goats.

I want to hear from Pet owners of non traditional Pets!

twshield 8 Jan 28
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21 comments

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11

Not now. I once had a Margay named George. She was misnamed by her original family. Margays are also known as Tree Ocelots. One of the pictures will show you why.

That cat is gorgeous!!!

6

For many years, I had several snakes as pets - a rainbow boa, a 9ft redtail boa, and two ball pythons - one of which died at 24yrs, and is buried in my yard ... I used to take them to schools and lecture. Won over a lot of scaredies and haters.

Then until very recently, I had two tarantulas . Rosehairs.

Kept a brown widow (cousin to the black) for a summer, just to observe her, then let her go back in the yard. Also raised an orphaned opossum , named Velcro. What a sweetie she was !
And a couple snapping turtles - till they were big enough that they were looking beyond the worms - to my fingers.

you shoul look up Tank the Snapping Turtle. he is snuggly

@btroje I did - he's a hunk ! Shows how any animal, under the right conditions, can be persuaded not to munch on people. Nice people, anyway. Thanks for mentioning him !

5

Cat dog chickens had a farm goats cow ducks, I am a wildlife carer and I live near the bush, so not pets as such, but we are surrounded by all sorts of native Australia Fauna.
My last property had hundred of roos of all kinds and 3 emus,not tame but not scared either. I have bats here under the eves, all sorts of lizards and snaked in the yard, they come and go with the seasons, not exotic here, but in other parts of the world they would be. We even have a koala at the end of the street some evenings when I go for a walk,

big fruit bats?

@btroje small microbats around the house, but yes, hundreds and hundreds of fruit bats, we call them flying foxes. The are outside my window every night, make a lot of noise, thankfully they don't camp here

@Rugglesby as one who has only seen them on page or in the zoo I think they are cool. Bats in general

5

I've had a few snakes over the years. My favorite was Baby, a 17' 3" reticulated python who lived in a room I built for her in our garage. She was a homing snake: I could take her to the edge of our quarter acre lot and turn her loose and she would invariably turn around, head for the back off our house, crawl along the edge until she came to the back door, enter the garage, enter through the deadbolt door to "Baby's Crib" (her room), head for the appliance box in which I'd cut an entrance hole to provide her privacy, and crawl in. For a snake, she showed exceptional intelligence. Whenever she was hungry, she'd rub up against my leg like a cat.

5

Do rats count as exotic? Cause I love my boys Lemmy and Dio.

rats are awesome pets - like little dogs - only much easier !

subchihuahua

4

I don't know how exotic this is, but I (my son, actually, but I take care of her) have a leopard gecko. Getting up in age, she is around 7 now.

Wow. Love those critters.

4

We raised ferrets in Seattle for many years but it got frustrating losing them so often -- six is old for a ferret.
We took a child's playpen and covered the sides with sort of chicken wire. It made a good small animal environment.
Ferrets aren't very social -- they won't come when you call them. But they are great fun as pets. If you do need to call them, a squeaky balloon will work every time. They love to crawl around inside clothes, especially when you're wearing them.

Hey cool! My brother lives in Seattle and a couple decades back had two ferrets for the duration of their lives. He actually put chicken wire on the backs of all the appliances to keep roaming ferrets from chewing wires and insulation. The girl ferret happened to have a shoe fetish. She would rip insoles out of shoes! Once when I was visiting for a week, she got into my luggage somehow, stole some underwear and chewed it into nesting material for her den. I didn't even know It until my brother was cleaning their den and found the shredded garment. It was so funny I couldn't even get mad about the destroyed underwear. Lol

4

alpacas

Alpacas are adorable to look at. What are they like? I'm a little confused about why people have them as have seen them on menus 😮 but they're so darned cute. Are they pets or raised for meat?

@Qualia in southamerica they are commonly eaten. I raise them for fleece. the market used to be just for the animal. As the population increased they started to cull them for meat. THey are pretty mellow. Suspicious of being touched as they are a prey animal but some will let you. THe babies are beautiful. Mostly easy keepers out here in the high desert but back east and in the wetter areas you have to be skilled at managing parasites as you would any livestock

@btroje they're so stinkin' cute.
Thanks I was wondering. Before excrement hit the fan ordered some "alpaca chunks" for dogs & cooked it. It smelled amazing, but have ppl in my FB list who raise them altho I know nothing about them made me feel bad for ever having it in my house. I don't think if it was viable I could raise them for meat. They'd have to be real assholes for me to be ok with that.

@Tenacious I am teaching myself to do it all.Alpacas are no longer expensive. If you just want to have fiber animals you could probably get a herd of males free

3

Not now, but when I was a teenager, living on a farm in rural Missouri. My stepdad was cutting the field and killed a Mama Raccoon. The two babies survived the cutting blade because it passed right over them. He picked them up and brought them to the house. My younger sister immediately named them "Preacher and Parson" - We fed them and they grew quite tame to us, but not the dogs!! One day they just left (they were never caged, we kept them in the 'coon house' a shed on the farm, and the door was always open). The really interesting part is over a year later, we came back from a trip to CA and found them in one of the trees near the house! They were HUGE! They 'accepted' our petting them and cooing over them, then scampered off never to be seen again.

3

Ferrets they investigate every corner of the house when we let them loose. The cat likes to chase them around they are rather friendly, however I have looked in their moths those are some long sharp teeth they have.

3

I am kind of a freak when it comes to animals.

I am 100% opposed to peopole keeping ANY WILD (read, wild, as in I don't mean those that have domesticated for thousands of years) animal as a "Pet." I think it cruel and selfish and mean. Not fish, not birds, not snakes, nor lizards, ferrets, hermit crabs, or ANY animal. I think wild animals should be FREE to be in nature, 100%. The exceptions to this (for me) are the injured, the sick, the orphaned, and the abused who are nursed back to health and live in sanctuary type places -- those that cannot go back to the wild.

I hope I don't offend anybody by saying that so bluntly. I feel very strongly about wild critters not being held captive for our amusement. Yes, that means I do not go to animal amusements like Sea World, or to "swim with the dolphins." But, I would go to watch the whales from a respectful distance. Can't wait to do that.

Yes, I DO eat very mainstream meat. One would think I might be vegetarian, but I'm not and never will be.

I won't disagree. We only take in rescue animals. And we are vegetarian although not specifically for animal welfare reasons.
Just now we're down to four dogs.

I agree with you 100%. I hate all zoos, aquariiums or any place that uses animals for entertainment. i agree with everything you said!

3

We've had preying mantis before. They're like having a martian for a pet. While fun to do properly in winter is on a level I'm not willing to try.

2

Five snakes (3 Cali Kings, 1 Mexican Black King, and 1 Bull snake), and a hedge hog.

Zster Level 8 Jan 31, 2018
2

I don't now, but in the past I've had a 9 foot Burmese Python and a ferret (not at the same time of course).

2

I share a room with a leopard gecko. It's the only place the cat can't go.

2

I have a Fischers African lovebird.

pic please

Boba, aka Lil Squish.

2

I have an Indonesian girlfriend...she a little rabid though ????

Hmmm... I'm sure she's everything you say she is.

Funny! I had an Indonesian boyfriend once... he brought with him good food. Though after a few years he did go a little rabid so I had to run away 😉

@Sacha was he ever a good pet?

@btroje Sometimes he did what he was told. He got a pat on the head and told he was a good boy, then got put back in his cage everynight.

@Sacha what more can you ask?

1

Not at the moment, but I've had three Royal (Ball) Pythons and one Burmese Python. The Royals were all really placid, but all succumbed to illness after a while. The Burmese was plain nasty (though it got used to me, and seemed to hate me slightly less than most humans.) It escaped from its enclosure one day when I was out, managed to get under next door's floorboards, died under there and stank their house out. We weren't on very good terms after that.

1

Yes, his name was Stanley..

1

I had piles of exotic pets from growing up in Haiti, as well as regular pets, and was rehabbing birds and wild animals since I was seven.
Normal pets in Haiti-guinea pigs, a goat, horses, cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, and guinea fowl.

Wild pets in Haiti: Limpkin chick, White-necked Crow babies, Hispaniola parrots, boas.

The US: I had piles of regular pets like horses, a mule, dogs, a cat, and bred exotic birds-mostly parrots- for several years, hand raising the babies of many of them.
My daughter kept a fat white African frog for years. We even farmed earthworms in the winter to feed him.

There were various local snake species (rough green snakes, eastern king snakes, hognosed snakes, eastern banded water snakes, garter snakes) in eastern Kentucky that we'd rehab if injured, or that I'd pick up while hiking in the woods, and we'd keep for a couple of months, then release them where I'd caught them, well before hibernation time. We did keep one Eastern King Snake for a couple of years, letting him hibernate in a bag in the fridge in the winter.

My son took the snake everywhere with him, even to church, which I allowed as long as he kept "Kingy" in his little velvet drawstring bag. Even back then, I thought church was boring, and sympathized with my kids.

The kids had to be careful not to hold any of their other snakes to close to Kingy, while they were watching TV, or he'd grab the other snakes and start to swallow them.

Here in Thailand I had an Asian Fairy-bluebird who thought I was his mate and flew behind me around the house. He sang to me, nibbled on my fingers, watched movies with me, laughing and shrieking at car chase, and crash scenes.

Right now, all I have for "pets" are House Geckos that run around the walls, munch on my bean sprouts, and leave very sticky droppings (Eeew!).

1

No, but I wish I could own either a female baby leopard or a male baby jaguar.

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