Has anyone ever kept a completely unconventional pet before?

@cage: that is TERRIFYING. (it required the yelling)

How is this going to help your fear?

it’s fun, and it’s cute, and it’s mine, and I have control over him. Works amazingly well actually.
then I’ll see a big one and scream and run away like “DON’T EAT SID!!!”

Just make sure you are caring for it properly. Maybe look up some information on spider care.

Never done it, but to me it makes sense.

I had a friend try to keep a bat he caught once. It took a great deal of persuasion on my part to convince him that the poor guy was best off in the wild and not in a cage. I suppose I haven’t kept anything too unconventional myself. I did breed mantises at one point, but considering how easily they can be bought on the pet trade, I’m not sure they can really be called unconventional.

@tinyfaery, well, interestingly it says simply that the common house spider eats a variety of insects and can even eat worms. I’m taking the water idea, because that’s what happens in the morning with mist on the webs.
He’s tiny anyway, about 3mm long maybe?

I had a snake named Mona Lisa. She escaped many years ago never to be heard from again.

Once my cat brought home a chipmunk in a plastic cup over her mouth. I rescued it and kept it as a pet.

My dad had a flying squirrel when he was a kid.

I had a tarantula for 18 years, a Chilean Rose Hair (http://www.tarantulaguide.com/tarantulas/chilean-rose-hair-tarantula/). Her name was Beauregard (I learned how to sex them later). She was very mellow, very cool.

A grasshopper.

I had a flying squirel too when I was a kid (a rescue), and raised an orphaned mockingbird. When the mockingbird fledged, I helped him learn to fly (well, let’s just say I cheered him on as he figured it out), then released him into the backyard. He hung around for a couple of years, and when I would go out and yell his name, he would fly down and land on my shoulder Impressed the hell out of the other kids.

@syz: shudders

Um I kept lightning bugs, and caterpillars.

Just thought of something else! When I was probably about six or seven years old, I got it in my head to catch a bunch of red-spotted newts and keep them as pets. I put about two dozen of them in a large butter tub with a couple of worms. My mother wouldn’t allow them in the house so I put them under a bush so they wouldn’t get kicked off the porch or anything. Then I… forgot about them. It had to have been about three weeks before I remembered they were there. When I opened the container there were a handful of dead ones but nowhere near as many as there ought to have been. I suspect there may have been some cannibalism involved…

@MacBean. That was way too depressing for me to read at 7:30 in the morning!! :(

I always wanted a pot-bellied pig. So did my dad. I don’t know why we never got one if he wanted it too.

@ poofandmook—Sorry! Most of the time it makes people laugh!

@MacBean: lol it’s okay but.. still.. :( LOL

I have some pets that people have never heard of before like my peacock mantis shrimp or psychedelic mandarin but they really arent unconventional by any means as they are readily available in marine trade.

I used to raise caterpillars a lot when i was little though. I remember i once caught one that was bright orange and almost looked like it came out of a cartoon. It became a really nice looking blue butterfly.

In 1983, my family rescued a California Desert Tortoise that had been run over on Interstate 8. We took it home and nursed it back to health, with the help of a Fish and Game ranger (family friend). We donated him to a school in 1985, but that was the most exotic animal in the ‘ol menagerie.
If you encounter an Old Man of the Desert today, there is a very specific protocol to abide by, even if it is injured. FYI!