A caiman. Vicious little git

My kids’ elementary biology teacher had a zoo in his classroom, all these snakes and lizards and spiders, all sorts of animals, so in the Christmas break he had to farm them out. We got the tarantula once, and once a boa.

Also twice raised abandoned baby squirrels we saw kids walking around with. Like my ex just said “dude, you know how to take care of that?” And the kid shook their head no. Yes, twice. One was Earl, one was Pearl. They were sweet, and very sharp.

One of my kids’ swim coaches had a friend with a pet crow, too. A sailor with a pet crow; in fact a creepy sailor with a pet crow

I am sure you can guess what state I live in.

When I was a kid, 7-8 years old kinda thing, there was an older guy (maybe 13) who had a pet hawk.
He’d walk around the neighbourhood with the hawk perched on his leather-bound wrist, chained somehow.
That’s all I recall; don’t know who, what, or how. Saw it 3 or 4 times over the course of a year or two…

I knew someone who dealt in exotic animals and they came to work with a baby caiman alligator in a Tupperware because they were selling it after work

I worked with some who lived in South Africa who nursed a couple wild finches back to health. The finches got better but never flew away, and lived in the house. They’d sit on her shoulders during zoom meetings.

I currently have a Tegu 4ft long and sorta harness trained so im that someone for the neighbors im sure 😅

I’m friends with one guy who’s got an axolotl and another who’s got one of those African grey parrots. Both really cool animals. Also knew a kid back in school that had a pet squirrel.

I live in California. Pretty much all the cool pets are illegal here.

That being said I knew a guy who had a raccoon and several ferrets. Their house smelled awful but once you were there for awhile you kinda stopped smelling it and the raccoon and ferrets were adorable together.

My nephew has snails. He smuggled them out of the schoolyard in his hoodie after the teachers caught him the first time and confiscated them. My sister found them and had to take them to a pet store to make sure they weren’t dangerous. Now they sit in a nice terrarium and it turns out the hardest part is keeping the humidity up.

My parents had a zebra when I was growing up in Northern California. He was skittish, to the point that this animal lover never got closer than 10 feet until it wound bolt. He brayed at sunrise, easily drowning out the roosters. He sadly ingested part of a mat in his stall which ended up killing him.

After my parents moved once I left home, they got 2 more of these fancy donkeys.

There’s a guy on Instagram who has two absolutely massive pythons, like 16 feet long and thick as tires. They drape themselves across his young daughter very casually, and she spends time playing Barbies with the big one. The owner is very educated about snakes and obviously takes very good care of them, and isn’t some trash person who just wants violent animals, but much like pit bulls all it takes is one wrong turn and that child could die in a terrible way. I know some pet snakes are very docile, but something that could take it into its head to strangle me for dinner is not a pet to me.

People’s pit bull apologia is bad enough, we had a person in my ER one night who had been walking their friend’s pit bull who they walked often, who yanked the leash when he saw another dog, and when they tried to grip it the dog turned around and began mauling them, and ripped their arm right off. Someone called 911 and the cops showed up and had to shoot the dog and kill it to get it off them, and they took both them and the arm to our hospital but couldn’t save it. My niece is also missing part of her lip because of a pit bull. Those are exotic animals that are extremely dangerous to me, fuck that nanny dog bullshit.

When I was a kid back in the 70’s there was a woman with a spider monkey who lived in the same trailer park as my grandfather. She rode around on a bike with it on her shoulder and would stop when my sister and I were visiting. We were never allowed to pet it, we’d watch while the lady fed it clovers.

I’ve seen someone walking a pig in the forest. Yes, a large pink hairless pig. It was almost like walking a dog, but this animal was quite a bit larger than most dogs.

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Met a couple with a pet raccoon, on a leash and everything. I asked them how it was, since my wife had fantasized about a pet raccoon. They described it as a “little mischief goblin”.