Have you, or anyone you know, ever adopted an animal that's not considered an every day pet?
Anything that isn’t a cat, dog, hamster, horses, various birds and fish, lizards or scorpions…well basically, any animal that is usually not kept as a pet, or rarely ever. Or out of those, any in those families of animals that are usually not pets like…komodo dragons.
Please note that this question does not include animals that are kept for something other than companionship, like cows or pigs that are meant to be killed and eaten.
The animal in questions has to be a friend. Like for example, I met this guy years ago who had a wolf. (90% wolf and 10% Husky, least according to the owner, frankly I really could not tell) Except the city told him he had to get rid of it, because it was too dangerous. (don’t know if he ever did) This was some dude I partied with, went to his house once, the wolf wasn’t mean, but it wasn’t friendly, either, and I admit, I did very little effort to approach him. I’m dead scared of dogs. But he got along with his owner quite fine, as I saw. didn’t know wolves were that small though lol
You hear stories like that often, like some guy who owns a tiger and walks him in town, people having monkeys as pets, once I met a girl who had three pigeons living in her house.
So, got any stories? Ever had a wild animal as a pet? Did you ever rescue one? Or do you know anyone who has? How did all that go?
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My neighbors have a cow, and they take it in walks… Like, on a leash. Does that count?
Also, there’s this one guy that lives in my town who keeps three Moose as pets.
When I was a kid a family nearby had a pet woodchuck. He loved lollipops. He’d sit on his back legs and hold it in his forepaws and chow down.
I had a hognose snake for a while, until it escaped into the wilds of our home.
Another time we adopted a baby skunk. He was the last of a litter. A gas station attendent in west Texas had killed the mother who was living under his house (which was next to his station) and he was reluctant to kill the young ones that he found after he had killed her and was giving them away to whomever would take them (yes, we were one of those suckers). We had his scent glands removed when he got a little older. He was cute. When angry he would make a spitting sound and his tail would go straight up into the air while his back legs hopped up and down off the ground. Other than that he was like an intensely curious cat, always into things.
A neighbor adopted a fawn for several months. It used to follow her around like a dog. She let it into the house and treated it just like one of her dogs. She took it to a sanctuary close by before it became full grown.
The “weirdest” thing I’ve ever kept were some black widows I found near the house. It was absolutely fascinating watching them kill their prey.
My mother had a squirrel when she was a kid. I had a few billion praying mantis babies that hatched and I kept them all. They kept eating each other until there were only about 11 or 12.
My geese were not “everyday” pets, otherwise, I rescued and kept a baby roof rat once and a pair of Deer mice. They were amazing little critters. The roof rat could, literally climb the walls, and while he tamed down he was always super fast and skittish. The deer mice were so cute.
One was caught by my cat and lost and eye and part of his tail. I called him ” one eyed Jack.” lol
I rescued another one, a female, ” Lily”, but for some reason they never reproduced for whatever reason. They lived together for several years in a big aquarium fat and happy.
My daughter had a tank of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches for years too, they were also interesting, creepy, but harmless.
@Coloma Maybe Jack lost more than a piece of tail?
Not me, but pet ducks, pet skunks are gaining popularity, and my great uncle had a pet raccoon.
@Coloma my sister kept hissing cockroaches as well. Cool little buggers.
For a while I kept a spider as a pet in a jar. Turned out it was a brown recluse spider. Lucky for me I didn’t try to pet it.:)
When I was very small my sister and I caught a field mouse, and kept it in a box. We named it Jeffrey. (Not that we knew the gender. We just assumed it was a boy)
He died after a few hours, and we burried him in the back yard.
We had an owl in a cage one, for about a week. We let it go.
I once had a ferret named Ninja and a brown Haitian tarantula named Vivian.
M. Does my husband count?
I have never had such a pet myself but a friend had snakes. One time, I was handling one of them and it slithered under my shirt, wrapped itself round my waist like a belt and fell asleep there. It clearly liked the warmth.
I used to have a peahen named Baby. She wandered into our yard and stayed for over a year, before moving in with the neighbors across the lake. I loved her call.
My brother in law kept snakes. Their cages lined the family room. The dangerous ones were in locked glass cages. I found it pretty creepy. He also kept mice in the garage to feed the snakes.
Thanks for the answers everyone. Didn’t think about it at the time of asking, but I’m interested in the bug pets. The spiders and praying mantises that were mentioned.
I loved insects as a kid, especially butterflies, and my deal was to catch caterpillars and then sometimes they would make cocoons and turn into butterflies. It was great. But sometimes, it went wrong…
Lots of insects lay eggs on caterpillars, and when the latter makes a cocoon, it serves as food for solitary wasp larvae or these tiny things that look like fruit flies…so more often than not, I got nasty wasps and shitloads of mini flies instead of butterflies…and it made me sad. Lol.
@AshLeigh…holy shit. Moose? Damn, man.
@downtide Yeah, snakes are cool. What kind was it, do you know? I know this dude who has a snake, and he once lost it for a week…he found the snake again by the water heater. So yeah, they probably seek warmth. :/
We live in Alaska. It’s not even that impressive to me. I see moose almost every day, in the winter.
@Symbeline When I was really young I found this amazingly bright orange caterpillar. It looked like something out of a cartoon to me as a kid. So naturally, I had to go run grab a jar and catch it. Later that day I found a really cool looking spider….but I only had one jar….so into the jar the spider went as well. Almost instantly hundreds of baby spiders came crawling off the back of the bigger spider(still one of the craziest things I can remember seeing :P) and I was kinda freaking out cause I didn’t want my awesome caterpillar to get eaten. So I dumped both out of the jar and tried to save the caterpillar. The caterpillar ended up surviving, forming a cocoon , and a few weeks later came out as a beautiful and rather giant moth
Very cool story @uberbatman! I had baby food jars for years and years after the kids were no longer babies so we’d never run out of jars for bugs.
We used to catch many of bees in jars, place some ickle flowers in there so they’d remain calm, well…as calm as a bee can be when encased in a glass tomb :/
My husband had a tarantula when he was a kid. When it finally died, he put it on a model boat and released it in the steam behind his house, then set it on fire. Viking funeral for ol’ hairy legs.
Oh, I forgot about “Little Dude” my “pet” Skunk.
He was one of 7 babies that were born in a big drainpipe at the end of my driveway.
“Little Dude” was the only offspring that hung around from 2006 to 2009 when he disappeared. I fear my evil neighbor shot him as he was an ass.
“Little Dude” would come to my deck every night and I would give him hard boiled eggs. He took them from my hand.
We had this truce, he let me go to my hot tub, I gave him an egg. lol
Once, I thought he was one of my cats on the deck after dark, and I gave him a little shove with my foot to move the “cat” out of the way, then I realized it was he. haha
No problem, he probably would have let me pick him up, but I wasn’t going to push my luck.
I had an orb spider on my front porch once. We didn’t have TV so I spent a lot of time on my porch reading. This guy spun a web every single night, all summer long, It was really cool. The kids named him “Spidey.” Then one morning he was gone, and a much bigger spider was in his place. I promptly euthanized him. Son of a bitch. Killed Spidey.
I’m a bit late but deal with it! My friends family has owned a cow that was actually for companionship and they had her from when she was little till she got really sick. It was terrible. And that same family has also had a duck named Ethel that wore diapers and sat in the front seat on car rides, and a chinchilla I named muffin and somewhere in the mix they had sugar gliders. Crazy crazy pet people. Oh, not to mention the several dogs, cats, birds, and rats over the years.
I had a mouse in my house, for the first time ever, when I lived in a rental here in town. It was so cute! I made an open cage for it so the cat couldn’t get him, and put food and water out…..So cute…....Oh my Lord! 3 months later my affections had changed drastically. I was cheering like mad every time a damn sprang and killed the little SOB’s!
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