Possums. Their mom abandoned them (likely died) in the berry patch in our backyard. So we raised them until they could go to the local wildlife preserve.
I was just thinking about this yesterday! Trying to remember all the different goofy animals we had growing up. Let’s see - we had hamsters, a salamander, a snake, a turtle, a couple pheasants, a couple cockatiels, an albino bunny, a mouse or two, a couple rats - one of which was also albino, lots of fish, dogs (though I’ve only had one in my lifetime so far) and cats. There might even be more that I’m not remembering. All I know is it was certainly fun growing up with such a wide variety of critters.
Pot-belly Pig. Someone gave it to us, that little pig learned tricks faster than any dog. It was always on a diet…
We raised rabbits, but… (sorry) they were for meat.
A girlfriend I had many decades ago had a ferret. What an evil animal. It grabbed my hand & wouldn’t let go until I wacked it against a wall a few times. I hate ferrets.
The goats we’ve raised were all pets. We even had milk goats for a while.
We’ve raised about every type of farm animal & filled our freezers with most of them.
Skunks! We had two of them, but at different times. We also had some traditional and semi-traditional pets, but skunks became the family trademark. They make Awesome pets and are affectionate and easily litter trained. Unfortunately our state no longer allows them in such capacity, so I try to make friends with the ones I find in the wild. (Not a hobby for the faint of heart )
@mehcuda67 I have wanted a skunk for so long. I did a bunch of research, on them, a few years back. I swear, I will own one, eventually. There is a skunk breeder about an hour south of me, too.
@katbyter I was kind of thinking that myself. I think we had a hamster for a few days or a few weeks when I was little. For some reason it wound up going to someone dad worked with, not sure why.
@katbyter right? i had a guinea pig, as well as two rabbits over the years, but i’m not sure how those (or hamsters/gerbils) are non traditional…strange. pretty typical first pets in terms of availability and responsibility level, at least in the US. no?
We had a chicken named Myrtle (turns out she was a rooster). We lived in the Denver suburbs of Evergreen, Colorado, so not like sneaking one into an apartment, but we didn’t live on a farm or anything.
I had a rat. When I was 7 or 8 I really wanted my own pet and my mom said I could get a rodent if I researched it and did a presentation about which was the best pet and why. Rats are the smartest rodent, you know.
I’ve also had cats, dogs, a rabbit, a bird and a frog that won a pair of snake skin boots but since those were all options rat seems like the most nontraditional.
@jqubed Rats. They are really nice animals. Can be as attached to you as a dog.
If you like animals, you would like one.
So why don’t people have them? They are born with a lung disease, unless they were lab rats. It kills them in 18 to 26 months. Even with vet care.
It is like your dog dying every 2 years.
Most people only get them a few times because of that.
Don’t get one, they are social. Get 2. Son didn’t know that and left me with Splinter when he went to college.
@smilingjack I had a rat make it to about 3.2 years old, but the other 5 all died between 1.5 and 2.5. Great pets if you can handle having them die all the time.
I have sphynxes but only because I I thought sugar gliders would need more space, be too stinky, and chew my cords; the exact problems I ended up having with my cats. Btw a liquid spray of Benadryl water has really worked for keeping my cats from chewing on things like toilet paper and cords along with the corners of expensive pillows. Cats freak out about the taste though in reasonable doses, it’s harmless. Some even need to take it for allergies just like humans. If only I had known all that from day one.
@TheCO2 I had to go to my sister in laws house once a week when her daughter came home from college for intersession with a snake. She went away for a month and I’m the only adult they knew who would feed it. Dead mice only. I refused to put a live animal in the cage.
At the end of my school year, in sixth grade, I claimed our classroom turtle. He was a small musk turtle, looked a lot like this:
His name was Leo (he was a ninja turtle, obviously).
That turtle stayed with me though high school, college, first apartment, first house, 2 kids, and second house until he died about 4 years ago. Quick math and that was a total of 33 years of turtlely companionship.
He’s buried in my back yard, under a stone bench, with a nice view.
I’ve had birds, gerbils, and hermit crabs in the past.
My wife, meanwhile, is the daughter of a rural veterinarian, and grew up with pet snakes, raccoons, donkeys (there’s an old photo of a young donkey sharing the sofa with the family), and pretty much anything else you might find around here.
Our current menagerie is a dog, four indoor cats, a variable population of barn cats (all fixed, thankfully), three ducks, and six chickens. Though there’s been talk of adding a goat and/or alpaca to the mix . . . .
Growing up, we always had non-traditional pets. Raccoons, Mallard Ducks, even raised a whitetail deer fawn for a couple months until we realized my little sister was seriously allergic to it. We also raised a batch of pheasants but couldn’t “handle” them, so I don’t consider them “pets”.
I had so many options I wanted to pick but in the end went w Husband. I love animals and am so glad we have dogs. But the birds, reptiles, sugar glider, cat, I am happy to help care for and love but would have never purchased in the first place. Especially the birds, they keep bonding to the husband and therefore decidedly don’t like me.
When I was a kid, I had a pet toad. My mom was allergic to traditional pets, so beyond fish, anything we found kinda became a pet for a while. We had that sucker for 8 years, which I think is pretty significant for a run-of-the-mill toad.
The best was in the summer we’d feed it fireflies and then shut off the lights. It would glow after he ate them, and it was like an x-ray – we could see his skeletal structure and innards. So cool!
@ACraigL Fireflies are actually fatally toxic to many reptiles and some amphibians. It sounds like your toad was fine, which is likely because the toxins within fireflies are similar to the bufotoxins produced by toads, but other animals can be killed by ingesting just one firefly. So please don’t feed them to your pets! Or eat them yourself - they are bad for people too.
I have had; 22 cats, 18 dogs, 5 Guinea pigs, 1 hamster, 1 turtle, 4 fish, 1 rabbit and 5 birds, in my life.
I have had up to 8 dogs and 8 cats at the same time.
Thank goodness I live in the country and they have plenty of room.
I have 4 cats, 5 dogs now.
I got my first puppy in 19 years in October, my four others were rescues.
This is Allie Bama,
As a kid I had a shoe box full of dirt with a worm in it. My mom found it. Made me release it back into the wild of our backyard.
I kept a grasshopper alive for a few weeks in a jar. I let it out under a net a few times a day so it could eat.
The first one died when I forgot about it. I felt bad so I think I let the next one go after a week or two.
Gerbils, hampsters (like gerbils better), turtles, tadpoles (and thus frogs temporarily), crawfish (generally liberated back to the stream after several weeks), fish (had them as cat TV and because my kid wanted some. For about 3 weeks). Spiders (now cat toys but as kids we kept them a jar with a twig), wasp - yes I know, weird… kept in a baby food jar with holes in the lid (long story, initiated by my kid) also fire flies, actual ant farm as a kid, caterpillars and subsequent butterflies (that we’d liberate), attempted to have a chipmunk we caught in a butterfly net but mom nixed that. Plotted to have at least one of the very large (probably 12" long) gold fish in the nearby lake. Do we count the salamanders always getting into the house (aka cat food) and cockroaches (aka cat toys)?
I keep catching things and letting them go again. Grasshoppers, ladybugs, spiders, garden snakes, a chipmunk once. Probably the least usual was a horned toad (which is a full reptile, despite its name). If I could feed them I’d keep them up to a week. If I couldn’t feed them I’d let them go after a few hours
Possums. Their mom abandoned them (likely died) in the berry patch in our backyard. So we raised them until they could go to the local wildlife preserve.
They’re adorable and hiss.
A ferret. Until it went swimming in the neighbors pool.
I was just thinking about this yesterday! Trying to remember all the different goofy animals we had growing up. Let’s see - we had hamsters, a salamander, a snake, a turtle, a couple pheasants, a couple cockatiels, an albino bunny, a mouse or two, a couple rats - one of which was also albino, lots of fish, dogs (though I’ve only had one in my lifetime so far) and cats. There might even be more that I’m not remembering. All I know is it was certainly fun growing up with such a wide variety of critters.
Do fleas count? If so I had one hell of a circus going…
Chinchillas, rabbits, a sheep or two, some spiders.
Pot-belly Pig. Someone gave it to us, that little pig learned tricks faster than any dog. It was always on a diet…
We raised rabbits, but… (sorry) they were for meat.
A girlfriend I had many decades ago had a ferret. What an evil animal. It grabbed my hand & wouldn’t let go until I wacked it against a wall a few times. I hate ferrets.
The goats we’ve raised were all pets. We even had milk goats for a while.
We’ve raised about every type of farm animal & filled our freezers with most of them.
Skunks! We had two of them, but at different times. We also had some traditional and semi-traditional pets, but skunks became the family trademark. They make Awesome pets and are affectionate and easily litter trained. Unfortunately our state no longer allows them in such capacity, so I try to make friends with the ones I find in the wild. (Not a hobby for the faint of heart
)
@mehcuda67 I have wanted a skunk for so long. I did a bunch of research, on them, a few years back. I swear, I will own one, eventually. There is a skunk breeder about an hour south of me, too.
My brother-in-law had a pet squirrel. There was a guy in my childhood neighborhood that had a raccoon.
Hamsters, guniea pigs, rats, fish, cats, dogs and an iguana.
I wouldn’t exactly consider a hamster a nontraditional pet.
@katbyter I was kind of thinking that myself. I think we had a hamster for a few days or a few weeks when I was little. For some reason it wound up going to someone dad worked with, not sure why.
@katbyter right? i had a guinea pig, as well as two rabbits over the years, but i’m not sure how those (or hamsters/gerbils) are non traditional…strange. pretty typical first pets in terms of availability and responsibility level, at least in the US. no?
We had a chicken named Myrtle (turns out she was a rooster). We lived in the Denver suburbs of Evergreen, Colorado, so not like sneaking one into an apartment, but we didn’t live on a farm or anything.
Guinea pigs are the best. They’re smart, they have great personalities (most of them, anyway), and it’s easy to care for them.
I had a rat. When I was 7 or 8 I really wanted my own pet and my mom said I could get a rodent if I researched it and did a presentation about which was the best pet and why. Rats are the smartest rodent, you know.
I’ve also had cats, dogs, a rabbit, a bird and a frog that won a pair of snake skin boots but since those were all options rat seems like the most nontraditional.
@metaphore What does a frog do with only one pair of boots?
Ferret and multiple rats.
Snake.
Paging @smilingjack
@jqubed Rats. They are really nice animals. Can be as attached to you as a dog.
If you like animals, you would like one.
So why don’t people have them? They are born with a lung disease, unless they were lab rats. It kills them in 18 to 26 months. Even with vet care.
It is like your dog dying every 2 years.
Most people only get them a few times because of that.
Don’t get one, they are social. Get 2. Son didn’t know that and left me with Splinter when he went to college.
@smilingjack I had a rat make it to about 3.2 years old, but the other 5 all died between 1.5 and 2.5. Great pets if you can handle having them die all the time.
I have sphynxes but only because I I thought sugar gliders would need more space, be too stinky, and chew my cords; the exact problems I ended up having with my cats. Btw a liquid spray of Benadryl water has really worked for keeping my cats from chewing on things like toilet paper and cords along with the corners of expensive pillows. Cats freak out about the taste though in reasonable doses, it’s harmless. Some even need to take it for allergies just like humans. If only I had known all that from day one.
@5665150 I’ll have to keep that in mind I just use water and a little bit of vinegar in a squirt bottle
I have had 2 iguanas, 7 snakes and 4 ferrets. I only have 4 snakes, right now.
@TheCO2
@mfladd Because snakes are awesome.
@TheCO2 I had to go to my sister in laws house once a week when her daughter came home from college for intersession with a snake. She went away for a month and I’m the only adult they knew who would feed it. Dead mice only. I refused to put a live animal in the cage.
Iguana
At the end of my school year, in sixth grade, I claimed our classroom turtle. He was a small musk turtle, looked a lot like this:
His name was Leo (he was a ninja turtle, obviously).
That turtle stayed with me though high school, college, first apartment, first house, 2 kids, and second house until he died about 4 years ago. Quick math and that was a total of 33 years of turtlely companionship.
He’s buried in my back yard, under a stone bench, with a nice view.
/giphy tamagotchi
We just had a funeral for our rabbit two days ago.
Thanks for ripping open the wound, Meh.
I’ve had birds, gerbils, and hermit crabs in the past.
My wife, meanwhile, is the daughter of a rural veterinarian, and grew up with pet snakes, raccoons, donkeys (there’s an old photo of a young donkey sharing the sofa with the family), and pretty much anything else you might find around here.
Our current menagerie is a dog, four indoor cats, a variable population of barn cats (all fixed, thankfully), three ducks, and six chickens. Though there’s been talk of adding a goat and/or alpaca to the mix . . . .
Does a pet rock count?
Growing up, we always had non-traditional pets. Raccoons, Mallard Ducks, even raised a whitetail deer fawn for a couple months until we realized my little sister was seriously allergic to it. We also raised a batch of pheasants but couldn’t “handle” them, so I don’t consider them “pets”.
https://imgur.com/gallery/32qUA
@DemonMF777 hedgehogs are so cute!
/thread hijack
I have a few pet hates.
/giphy "pet hate"
/End thread highjack
Pray continue. I love pets
Hamsters.
/giphy hamsters
/image hamsters
/youtube hamsters
I had so many options I wanted to pick but in the end went w Husband. I love animals and am so glad we have dogs. But the birds, reptiles, sugar glider, cat, I am happy to help care for and love but would have never purchased in the first place. Especially the birds, they keep bonding to the husband and therefore decidedly don’t like me.
When I was a kid, I had a pet toad. My mom was allergic to traditional pets, so beyond fish, anything we found kinda became a pet for a while. We had that sucker for 8 years, which I think is pretty significant for a run-of-the-mill toad.
The best was in the summer we’d feed it fireflies and then shut off the lights. It would glow after he ate them, and it was like an x-ray – we could see his skeletal structure and innards. So cool!
@ACraigL Fireflies are actually fatally toxic to many reptiles and some amphibians. It sounds like your toad was fine, which is likely because the toxins within fireflies are similar to the bufotoxins produced by toads, but other animals can be killed by ingesting just one firefly. So please don’t feed them to your pets! Or eat them yourself - they are bad for people too.
@epitaphrei Interesting. Didn’t know that. But yeah, he seemed to be OK. I also promise not to eat them.
I’m not sure why Gerbils and Hamsters made the list of non-traditional pets, but I had both. My wife however had a duck.
I have had; 22 cats, 18 dogs, 5 Guinea pigs, 1 hamster, 1 turtle, 4 fish, 1 rabbit and 5 birds, in my life.
I have had up to 8 dogs and 8 cats at the same time.
Thank goodness I live in the country and they have plenty of room.
I have 4 cats, 5 dogs now.
I got my first puppy in 19 years in October, my four others were rescues.
This is Allie Bama,
As a kid I had a shoe box full of dirt with a worm in it. My mom found it. Made me release it back into the wild of our backyard.
I kept a grasshopper alive for a few weeks in a jar. I let it out under a net a few times a day so it could eat.
The first one died when I forgot about it. I felt bad so I think I let the next one go after a week or two.
Snakes… tarantula… Chinchilla… Apple Snail… children… oh wait, they’re not animals… oh wait, yes they are
Where’s the little clicky-button for goat(not the meh variety)? Goats are awesome.
I had many weird pets as a child, including a crawdad, a fire belly toad, and an axolotl.
Gerbils, hampsters (like gerbils better), turtles, tadpoles (and thus frogs temporarily), crawfish (generally liberated back to the stream after several weeks), fish (had them as cat TV and because my kid wanted some. For about 3 weeks). Spiders (now cat toys but as kids we kept them a jar with a twig), wasp - yes I know, weird… kept in a baby food jar with holes in the lid (long story, initiated by my kid) also fire flies, actual ant farm as a kid, caterpillars and subsequent butterflies (that we’d liberate), attempted to have a chipmunk we caught in a butterfly net but mom nixed that. Plotted to have at least one of the very large (probably 12" long) gold fish in the nearby lake. Do we count the salamanders always getting into the house (aka cat food) and cockroaches (aka cat toys)?
I keep catching things and letting them go again. Grasshoppers, ladybugs, spiders, garden snakes, a chipmunk once. Probably the least usual was a horned toad (which is a full reptile, despite its name). If I could feed them I’d keep them up to a week. If I couldn’t feed them I’d let them go after a few hours
@kaighintze This is all I picture when I see your username (weird…I know)
@mfladd <chuckle> That looks a lot better than my meat space body. Go ahead and keep thinking of me like that <big grin>
@mfladd sounds like you need to resurrect the Show Yourself thread.