Exotic pets are dangerous . . . really?
November 8th, 2006 by admin
Just in case anyone needed convincing, several news stories last week provided evidence that exotic “pets” are a bad idea.
Last Tuesday, a landscaper working at a house in Davie was jumped on, scratched and bitten by a wallaby kept in a cage at the home. The man was not seriously hurt, but he told a local television station that the incident was traumatizing. The next day, children at a school in Cooper City were frightened when a lemur escaped from a nearby home and made his way into the school playground. Thankfully, the monkey was caught safely and no children were injured. On Thursday, a resident in the city of Gulf Breeze spotted a chimpanzee in a field. She took a picture and staff at a local zoo confirmed that a chimpanzee is indeed on the loose in Florida’s Panhandle. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office warned residents that chimpanzees can cause “great bodily harm to humans.”
Coincidentally, the cover story of last week’s issue of Broward-Palm Beach New Times was about exotic pets and their cruel owners. The article profiled several misguided people in south Florida who have purchased coatimundi, arctic foxes, skunks and other wild animals. One couple in the town of Southwest Ranches hold captive a Russian lynx; the article mentions declawing, a common disfigurement suffered by exotic pets: “It took a vet nearly three hours to declaw Sasha’s pot-holder sized front paws. Without the surgery, he’d be unmanageable as a house pet.”
The article concludes, “Now, animals that would have been unthinkable as house pets a decade or two ago are for sale in stores, even big pet supercenters. Exotic pet ownership now comes with all the trappings of a trend swayed by impulsivity, insecurity, and vanity. When one possesses more of an instinct for profiling (coupled with disposable income) than smarts, it’s usually the animal who suffers.”
Strengthening regulations on the possession of big cats, monkeys, pythons and other exotic animals is one of ARFF’s priorities in the upcoming legislative session. We will need your help to be successful in Tallahassee. If you are not on ARFF’s e-mail list, please click here to sign-up to receive legislative updates.