Have you ever kept a wild animal as a pet?

It seems we do this every year. This year we raised a baby raccoon. Some road construction workers must have ruined the nest. My daughter found this itty bitty coon crying outside. I told her to take it back outside and the mother would take care of it, but it wouldn't let my daughter out of her sight, kept following her back to the house! I would guess that it was just a couple of weeks old. So I concocted a coon baby formula and fed it to her in a bottle and it's been true love ever since.She is the coolest pet I have ever had, its like she is part monkey. She would hold her own bottle to eat and when she was full she would climb in my shirt and snuggle in my boobs and take a nap. She still tries to do that but she now weighs 30 pounds! She has had all of her vaccinations including rabies, she uses a litter box and likes to play with the dogs and cat.

All of my pets have been domesticated...well, really, how domesticated is a cat?

That is pretty darn cool. I have heard that raccoons don't make good pets because they are so mischievous. They get into stuff that can be dangerous.

Very true! Her name is Courious George, Gorgie for short, We never leave her alone in the house! I let her loose outside alot (with supervision) she loves to climb the pine trees, while she's outside playing I usually do some gardening but I dont dare lay any tools down, she likes to hide them from me.

Yes. I kept a couple of tadpoles in a bucket outside. They grew until they were very tiny frogs and died.

No -- except for the spiders that live around my plants. Couldn't call those pets though.

Do turtles count?

Somewhat, I took care of a baby robin, but it had parents, apparently.

I'm a bit of a wild animal...

I had a bird once, his name was Neep. My sister saved him from falling out of his nest that was way up top an electric pole. His eyes weren't open yet and he was frantic hungry. Mysister drags it home and than is done with it, so I fed it ground up earth worms and oatmeal. The little guy grew up and couldn't fly very well, but it would come to me when I called it's name. I really liked that bird. That bird went everywhere with me. My mom wouldn't let me keep it in the house so we would lock it up in a little bird feeder outside in the crab apple tree. I had him all summer, me and that little bird.
Please do not ask anymore, it's not a happy ending.

My sister and I collected 100 tad poles and kept them in a plastic tub in the basement. Hoo! It stunk! All but 1 died, and we released that little baby frog in the creek outside. I like to think it had a wonderful life, lonley...but alive.

Yeah, scaly breasted bird, scorpion, millipede and probably a few other.

Nope.

We found a white tail fawn that was hit by a car, the conservation officer was on a 2 week vacation, so we were allowed to keep it until he got back from vacation, but sadly after a week it died from its injuries. It was a baby so we fed it goat's milk from a bottle.

Aww, sweet. I never realised it was common for most tadpoles to die. *feels less guilty*

Not as a pet... When we were kids, we would catch box turtles and keep them a few days, then release.

Oh wait... changing my answer.... when I was a kid, we had an aquarium set up for crawdads that we caught in the creek.... It was pretty neat.

> Aww, sweet. I never realised it was common for most tadpoles to die.
> *feels less guilty*

The trick is to feed them what they need, algae. I use algae wafers sold in pet stores, they are a round disk that floats and all the tadpoles come up to it and hang on, they kind of look like the pics you see in sex ed of an egg being fertilized Once they turn into toads or frogs they need somewhere to get out of the water and some live food. fruitflys are good, put a piece of fruit in the cage and they will come. We used to also catch ants by smearing some peanut butter inside of a paper cup ( a piece of apple or orange works too) and leaving it outside for a couple of hours then shake the cup of ants into the toad cage, the little things go nuts eating the ants, it is awsome to watch.

Yeah, we did feel plenty of grief at the time, but as I age, I hear more and more about kids and the tadpoles stories, I too feel less guilty.

I'm saving that in a Word doc for the future cheers

The species must suffer due to 'caring' kids

No, but my wife has a snake and is about to get another one. She has lots of fish, too... I kind of hope she'll get tree frogs someday, but I guess that means we'll get infested with fruit flies. A chameleon would be cool too, though that may require crickets, which are kind of loud. She really should get a turtle, because she loves them, but I think they have major requirements (if you want them not to die, and she doesn't).

I really only deal with the cats.

Wow, that's cool! do you have pictures?

> Wow, that's cool! do you have pictures?

Yes I do, but I don't know how to post them. I could e-mail them and someone else could post them.

Posting images isn't that hard... I could try to help you learn how, if you like. Here are some instructions:

o go to http://imageshack.us/
o near the upper-right, is a "browse..." button. Click that.
o A "choose file" window should pop-up.
o Use this window to find the image you want to post, from your computer (whatever you would have emailed).
o Once you've done that, you'll be back on the imageshack page, so click "host it".
o There are some other options there, but it's easiest to just ignore them.
o OK, now, wait for imageshack to come back with a page telling you the image was uploaded. Often an ad will pop-up too.
o This page has a number of "codes". You want to use one that is "for forums". Click on it and use "copy" (control c).
o Now, you can paste that code here at surveycentral in a comment, reply, forum post, your bio, etc.
o If the image is large, there's usually a couple choices, on the top they have thumnails (smaller images linked to the big one), on the bottom are the "hotlink" ones that are full-size. If the image is really large, the thumbnail is probably best.

It's really pretty easy once you see how it's done. There are other image sites, but imageshack is one of the easier ones to use.

As a lad we had a pair of red squirrels we kept in a bird cage in the day room, when I was older we had a pair of grey squirrels. Be careful with the coon, as they get older they can get a nasty attitude. My friend had an ocelot.

yeah...my pet scotty, and have had him for almost a decade now.

Indeed. It may be that the tadpoles' job on this planet is to be there for kids to learn in a gentle and least devastating way that caring for animals is serious business.

> She
> really should get a turtle, because she loves
> them,....

AH-HA!!

Poor things.

Nope, it's not her. Honestly, I don't know who FoxTurtle is.

'k, thought I'd give it a shot. Not that I was wondering or anything.

Can you tell where people are logging in from? I'm just wondering if it's a coastal area, or out in the middle of the ocean or what?

most turtles like to be around water, so...

Were your squirrels tame? From the research I have done on coons it seems the females get mean right after they are in heat, sometime in Feb. Before that they get really affectionate, which Georgie is doing right now, as soon as you open her cage she gets on your lap for a good scratching, gives you a few kisses, then picks your pockets and runs with whatever she has stolen from you They say the meanness will last for about a month, and then she will be back to her loveable bratty self, we'll see.

The red squirrels were somewhat tame, we used to let them run around the house on occasion, one time they climbed the Christmas tree and we had to turn on the lights to get them to come down. Then when you wanted them back in the cage, you put a slice of apple in the cage and they would go right back in. My parents always gave them crackers to eat and the salt killed them. The gray squirrels were released when they grew up, one never came back and the other would come eat out of your hand.

No and what wild animal are you?? i should get myself a lion or a tiger to protect me

Birds, snakes, desert camel spiders, and more. Usually until they died, were taken away or they healed and then I let them go.

Yes, when I was a little boy and my father was in the Air force stationed in Japan, he was based near Mount Fuji. We lived in a military housing project for the families. On Mount Fuji there live a miniature version of a bighorn sheep. Maybe thirty or forty pounds full-grown. Cute and pretty smart. They were called Yak Tories, a delicacy for the locals. We raised one for a while until he …well…filled out. I have a great recipe for Yakatory sticks, grilled like kabobs with pineapple and onion. You can get Yakatory meat at your better Japanese meat markets.

No, but I'd like to one day. I want an olm - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olm

Bill, I forgot how to do those Wikipedia links... again...

> Yes. I kept a couple of tadpoles in a bucket outside.
> They grew until they were very tiny frogs and
> died.

I did the same thing. Mine didn't even make it to the frog stage

Aww Poor beggars.

In the late '60s, when my family was living in America my father found a Mississippi Painted Turtle on his way home from work! The poor creature had been trying to cross what at the time was still Route 66, near our home in La Grange, Illinois. He took it home and we named her Splashy - she laid a few eggs but they never hatched. After about a year we returned her to a nearby river and released her.

I had a snail once. My brother ate it

Poor snail

And poor little brother - he knows that I will never forget it. Still, he's the vocalist in a death/extreme/experimental metal band now, so it can't really hurt his image.

True