Non-traditional pets

Soccer Mom

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Just curious who else has pets other than dogs and cats. I have those too, but I also have horses, goats (absolutely hilarious to watch them play) and a very naughty bunny who rules the house.

ETA- I forgot Jerry the fish. Shame on me.
 
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alleycat

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I had a pet duck when I was little. Well, until the duck grew up and got into my mom's garden.
 

MidnightMuse

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I've had guinea pigs and rabbits in the past, but when I was in Vet school, we had a wide variety of resident animals that we all considered our pets.

The goats were a hoot to play with ! The only problem was making them understand you were done playing, and wanted to leave :D You had to back out of the pens!

When I was little, my father came back from diving once with a baby octopus and he put it in our pool. I thought it was some kind of cool new pet.

Turns out it was just a fancy menu item!
 

Soccer Mom

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Oh, ducks make great pets. I'm not so big on chickens, but I like guinea hens. Plus they're death on grasshoppers.
 

awatkins

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We have two parrots and a big aquarium. Most of our fish are 8-9 years old and they all have names. :D

Sometimes the birds talk to the fish. Rio will sit and watch them swimming around and make kissy sounds against the glass. He tells them they are "pretty birds." As far as I can tell, the fish never answer him.

When I was little, my family had a farm so I grew up playing with goats (they can be hysterically funny), cows, ponies (no, they are not baby horses), horses, mules, donkeys, piglets, chickens, ducks, and guineas. Then there were crawfish, tadpoles, grasshoppers, june bugs, turtles, lizards--oh, I can't even remember all the critters I grew up with. That must be why I love writing about animals and nature so much. :)
 

Camilla

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I've had a lot of rats. They make wonderful pets - intelligent, affectionate, playful and curious - heaps of fun! But don't let them loose around your priceless antique anything - they'll chew it to bits! (I have a few books that ended up with pretty lace edgework from being on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the room where we let our rats out to play :p )

My avvy pic is of one of my past rats :D
 

TheIT

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At the moment I'm owned by two cats, but when I was a little girl my family ended up with an assortment of pets over the years including guinea pigs, a robin, two cats, and a snake (for one afternoon - Mom refused to let it into the house).

We also had a rat. My brother was in a psychology class in college where they ran experiments on rats, and when he learned the rats would be destroyed at the end of the class he took his rat home in a shoebox on the train. We named the rat Ralph. He was a white lab rat.

Now, I was about 5 or 6 at the time so I don't actually remember this, but my brother swears up and down this is a true story. Apparently I used to walk around the house with Ralph the Rat clinging to my shirt. One day some ladies came to visit my mom. They were in the living room chatting and my brother was laying on the couch reading a book. I got tired of everyone ignoring me, so I walked up to one of the ladies and asked if she wanted to see my pet. She said something like, "Certainly, dear," expecting I would come back with a kitten or a puppy. I plucked Ralph off my shirt, said, "This is Ralph. He's a rat," and held him up to her face. She screamed. She and all the ladies ran outside, my brother fell off the couch laughing, I started crying because I couldn't understand why everyone ran away from my pet, and Mom tried calming everyone down. The ladies refused to come back into the house until Ralph was locked in his cage in another room.

True story. :D
 

CATastrophe

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Great varieties.

When I was growing up, we had dogs. For Easter, when I was very little, my parents thought it'd be cute to get me some ducklings. That didn't last long. I believe they were eventually traded with a farmer for a couple dozen eggs.

As an adult, I've had ferrets, large dogs, and a pigeon. When I taught, at the same time as having the above pets, my summer charges - that would have been in my classroom - included a rabbit and mice.

Now I just have a bunch o' cats.:D
 

CATastrophe

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TheIt - Your story reminds me of a fake mouse I had when I was in grade school. My aunt gave to me and I used to pull little tricks with it all the time and freak people out. He looked real, kind of like the ones cats play with. Real fur, beady eyes, but it could sit on its behind like a squirrel.

One day, I took it to school and opened up my best friend's red plaid square metal lunch box, tore a tiny hole in her potato chip baggie, and put the mouse in there and closed it up and waited for the fun at lunch. (Way back old Catholic school - we ate in the classrooms)

It was good! Lunch flew, kids screamed, teacher had a fit. Well worth it! And when they found out it wasn't real...that really brought down the house. I used to call him Ralph, too!
 

oarsman

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I had some rats when I was young. I liked them climbing up my arms onto my shoulders. I always wanted to make the rats a maze or play set of pvc pipes to crawl through.

We had an African Fat-Tail gecko. He wasn't too active...happy just to rest on an arm or your hand. They are beautiful lizards, have a fat tail (of course), and are harmless. I also like the Leopard gecko, but never had one.
 

DeborahM

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TheIT said:
We also had a rat. My brother was in a psychology class in college where they ran experiments on rats, and when he learned the rats would be destroyed at the end of the class he took his rat home in a shoebox on the train. We named the rat Ralph. He was a white lab rat.

My mother, my husband and I went to visit a couple who had emus to learn about their setup and when we went into the house we were warned about their rat coming over for attention.

Here we are all taking and their rat comes across the couch where I'm sitting and jumps into my lap and before I realized it, I was petting it. Freaked me out, but it was a cute thing and very loving!

My family has an emu ranch and we also have a little petting zoo for the kids to meet different animals after the tour of the emus. It is fun to have so many different animals each with their own personalities.

I had a banty rooster that would come when I called him and jump on my foot and then to my arm then would get down when he was finished talking to me.

Besides Lucky, I have two birds, Merlin is a nandy conour and Doodles is a yellow collared mini macaw.
 

eldragon

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We have 2 rats, but they are rescued feeders, so they don't like being handled.


1 Tarantula.

4 DUCKS. The funniest thing is how they follow anything that moves.
 

GHF65

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All I've got now is horses, chickens, a cockatoo, two cats and a button quail, but over the years I've had salt water fish, African cichlids, a tank full of various types of spiders, twelve white rats left over from a high school biology project, a few garter snakes, some lizards, a couple of pigeons, bunnies (not good with bunnies), dogs, a tarantula, and was adopted by a young fox who brought me dead stuff and followed me around until I was able to trap and relocate him (sang "Born Free" and everything) to a state park.

At least some of that must count as "non-traditional".
 

TeddyG

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Iguanas, water turtles (red ears, painted and snappers)
A Vivarium with an Iguana, frogs, chameleons, and a various assortment of other lizards....

Oh and six kids....the worst pets of all :D
 

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When I was growing up, my Dad used to say that any stray would follow me home if I gave it a chance. My Mom was the one that let me keep them.

At any given time I have had: a guinea pig (George), a rabbit (two different ones during childhood, one big ol' flop-eared white one named Bodacious and a Norweigian Dwarf named Ginger Sunshine (we usually called her Sunshine or Ginny), all sorts of fish (most of them died before I could name them. I did have a betta named Magic Blue Catfood (primarily called Blue, or as my kids called him "Boo") and a plecostamus named SuctionMule), and a snake (typical garter named Alajahara, Allie for short).

My brother had hamsters (Fred and Cougar were two that I recall) and a lizard (don't remember either the name or the type, but he spit, a lot...mostly at my brother though).

My sister had two parakeets (boy and girl pair named Cat and Dog).
 

DragonHeart

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I've never lived without at least one cat (usually two, but we also had three litters of kittens...not at the same time, thank god! ), but when I was younger, around 5-6 years old, we did have two parakeets. Tweety and Petey, girl and boy. Tweety was the talker, Petey was more reserved. They got along with the cats just fine so we used to let them out of the cage and let them fly around and such. About all I can remember of either bird is that time Tweety flew into a bowl of mashed potatoes. >.>;

I did find a huge spider in the backyard once, I named him Hunter and kept him in the basement for a couple days, but I had to let him go when my mom found out. She hates spiders. :( Hunter was so cute and fuzzy...he let me hold him and everything. Oh well, he wouldn't have lasted long around my cat anyways lol.

Other than that I haven't really owned or been owned by anything other than cats. I've taken in a couple of wild birds after rescuing them from the cats (the neighbors cats, not ours) but that's only until they're feeling well enough to fly off on their own.

I'd love to get another pet but my mom probably won't appreciate that. She won't even let me get Chaos a playmate, so he has to settle for grumpy old Winston next door.

~DragonHeart~
 

eldragon

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The best unusual pet I ever had was a starling we rescued out of our cats mouth.

That bird survived the night and became the most interesting animal I have ever known. He sat on my shoulder, flew to my head, everything. (He poked my eye - not so funny.)

Unfortunately, we only had him about 4 months and he died of unknown causes. He was fine one moment and dying the next, and I have to say that everyone in our house cried over that little guy. It still makes my lip quiver to think about him.

He was that wonderful.
 

the bunny hugger

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Another one with rats. They only trick is to get good rats, the pet shops and fancy breeder inbreed the poor dears. A well-bred rats will live 5-7 years not the 1-2 most do. I had one who got to 9 (just).
 

awatkins

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I did an article about rats once and the breeders I interviewed said that rats are extremely intelligent (and very clean) and that they can learn their names and to come when called. Impressive!
 

oarsman

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rattitude said:
Another one with rats. They only trick is to get good rats, the pet shops and fancy breeder inbreed the poor dears. A well-bred rats will live 5-7 years not the 1-2 most do. I had one who got to 9 (just).

Wow...9 years. That must be close to a record for a rat's life span. You must really know how to care for rats and where to find a good breeder. I had some rats when I was a teenager and they only lived about a year or so. But, we got them from a pet shop. I would never do that again. Some shop owners can't tell the difference in the sexes (no wonder there is inbreeding). I also think rats get less priority than the larger animals in some shops.
 

Mom'sWrite

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We have the usual assortment of indoor quadropeds around here, but my favorite pets are the two desert tortoises we released into the desert around our home. As pets go, you can't do better in terms of easy care than the desert tortoise. They full-on hibernate for 6 months of the year (October-March) and when they are active in the summer, some of whatever juicy fruits and vegetables you happen to have on hand keep them happy as can be. None of the usual desert predators can figure out how to eat them and I just love watching them "run" to the door to greet us in the morning. We have stuck them in a box more than once and brought them for visits to the kids' schools. They have always been a huge hit.
 

jdkiggins

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Between my house and Mom's we now have two cats and two dogs. Here's Two Feather's non-traditional pet. Anyone care to guess?
Hint: No he's not a german shepard.
hawk1.jpg
 

Shwebb

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I had a raccoon, once. My ex-husband found her alongside a country road next to her mother's body. She was with us for about six months, until I insisted that she live outside--she was becoming quite wild and fierce. She learned from our cat how to use the litterbox, and she ate catfood, too. Her favorite place to hide was in my lower cupboards and kitchen drawers--I'd open up one of them to find her sleeping among the cutlery or in my stock pot.

She loved to attack our feet, and then run and hide and walk back out nonchalantly like, "Hey, someone attack you? Couldn't have been me--I was in the living room!" She would follow us on walks--when she lost sight of me, she would stand on her hind feet and whistle for me. She got into everything, and as she got older she didn't care when she got caught. Once I found her flinging flour out of my flour canister--she did the equivalent of a shrug and just walked away. She also loved digging into my purse and spreading the contents all over the floor.

Once she started getting close to maturity, she did become too much for us. I started encouraging her to spend time outside, and when she went into heat was when she finally left us.