# Not your everyday pets.



## mmb617 (Mar 28, 2015)

Seeing the pet rats thread got me to thinking about all the unconventional, some would say weird, pets we've had. We're old folks who are past this phase now but 30 years ago we enjoyed some odd choices in pets.

Let's start with the snakes. A lot of people are repulsed by snakes, but they aren't really bad as pets. You don't get a lot of feedback from them, but they do get used to being handled and won't bite when big if they get used to you when they're young.

We had a black snake, 3 ball pythons, 3 boa constrictors, a burmese python and a reticulated python.

This is Tiny, the one everyone who met her remembers as she grew from a little bitty baby to 12 ft or so adult. She was also quite docile and didn't mind being handled. She got a lot bigger than she is in this picture.







Another pet was Iggy the Iguana. We had this guy for about 10 years and he grew from maybe 8 inches long to over 5 ft. As he got older he sometimes would bite so we didn't handle him too much. He had a big walk in cage and seemed quite content to lay around and sun himself under the lamp.

And then there was Dandy the mountain lion. We got him as a 6 week old kitten and bottle fed him. We had him 11 years and he grew up to be over 200 lbs. 


Here he is as a little fellow.







And then a little bigger.


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## havasu (Mar 28, 2015)

As a kid, I was given a small alligator by my parents. It was shipped in a box by US mail from Florida. I had it for a couple of years and remember taking it to school for "show and tell." It only bit me once, and damn near ripped my finger off. Yeah, it died after leaving in the bathtub for a few days when we went on vacation. Here is the only pic I could find, on the lap of my sister.


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## mmb617 (Mar 29, 2015)

I remember when you could order a baby alligator from a magazine ad. Pretty hard to believe these days, but I know it was true. How big did that alligator get in those couple years you had it?

When we had the mountain lion it was all legal as we had a wildlife possession permit from the state game commission. Now you can't even bring one into PA unless you are a licensed zoo.


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## applebear (Mar 29, 2015)

I use to SWEAR I'd have a cougar when I grew up...I wouldn't dream of it now. How cool was it though to have one? Is funny how things have changed over the years, use to be able to find one in the paper.

The most exotic pet I had, was a pair of possom babies that fell off their momma in a friends fathers workshop....that were stripped from me the moment some wild life people got word of it. My dad had a badger, I could imagine how fun that pet was.

Other than that, most wild would be some parrots [a goffins cockatoo and blue headed pionus]. And ferrets that I got big into around 16, I raised and ran a shelter for many years until my divorce and I just couldn't do it anymore. I some times miss them, but doubtful I will ever go down that road again.


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## havasu (Mar 29, 2015)

mmb617 said:


> I remember when you could order a baby alligator from a magazine ad. Pretty hard to believe these days, but I know it was true. How big did that alligator get in those couple years you had it?



When the alligator was shipped to my house, it was only about 10" long. Poor thing was shoved into a 1" x 2" x 12" long cardboard box, with no food or water for several days. In the few years I had it, "Wally" grew to about 2' long. Man, that thing was mean!

I also remember going to the L. A. County Fair as a small child. For $2, you could buy a chameleon lizard that had a string leash around its neck, and you could safety pin it to your clothing. I bought the small cage and meal worms to feed it, but the darn things always died within a few weeks.


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## slownsteady (Mar 29, 2015)

> In the few years I had it, "Wally" grew to about 2' long. Man, that thing was mean!



I remember Wally!


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