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.

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”.

I worked with someone 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’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.

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

This isn’t that exotic I guess but I had a customer at the restaurant that would smuggle in his pet rat (I worked the graveyard so usually nobody was around). Its name was Gizmo and it would sit on his shoulder under his sweater and he would feed it French toast. Sweetest little thing.

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.

saw someone with a big ass snake.

Also, I owned a hedgehog once, dude had some serious trauma from his 5 previous owners. Yeah, 5.
He was always angry, but I still played with him anyways trying to get him to warm up to people. Never did, but he did like exploring all the books and crannies of the room. Wish I could’ve had him before all his previous owners :(

My aunt worked as a zoo vet, and was one of the people animal control would call if they found an exotic animal and didn’t know what to do with it. As a result I grew up being able to casually play with several different species of monkeys, as well as an asshole African grey parrot. When I was in high school she even fostered a serval cat for a short time till they could find a more permanent facility.

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Have known as couple dudes who had coyote cross bread canines. Or at least that’s what they said. Only really knew one of these dogs and its behavior never gave me any reason not to believe it wasn’t half coyote.

The dog stayed outside all year round including the winter. Not the by choice of owner but was where the dog prefered to be. It hated the indoors and would get too hot inside with its winter coat and fat. Roamed hundreds of acres of farm land and forest. Killed more Coons and rabbits than any other animals with aren’t the easiest animals to pin down. Was always a well behaved dog but if you fucked with it, snuck up on it, or played too rough… you prolly were getting stitches on your forearm or ass. It never attacked anyone unprovoked tho, it just sucked how easy it could be to accidently fuck up doing something like grabbing a glass of water in the middle of a summer night when someone forgot to let it out after dinner. It would like to chill inside in the AC on hot summer days.

Knew another dude when we were highschool aged who caught an orphaned white tail fawn. Raised it with his beef calfs and it lived like 3 years. Spent its whole life, including the 2 years it was a mature adult doe, just chillan and ranging around my buddy’s property. Would grunt outside the barn when dinner was late. We think that it basically thought my buddy was another deer so it would grunt like it’s trying to find other deer in the area if my buddy wasnt home or was late putting out feed. Anyone reading this should know tho, don’t fucking adopt abandoned fawns. Or any fuckin wild animals for that matter. If you find one, contact your local DEC office and let them handle it.

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.

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.

I saw someone bring their bobcat into a Lowes once. It was on a leash, and you bet I did not trust that leash. It looked overwhelmed.