Owning exotics

As football season approaches and the faithful make the pilgrimage to the stadium, the first sight of Mike VI often inspires fans’ fantasies of bringing a beautiful Bengal to their own dens. Since their lairs probably pale in comparison to Mike’s $3 million, 15,000-square-foot digs with tropical waterfall landscape, most Baton Rougeans settle for a visit from a neighborhood tabby or a 24-hour hook-up on LSU’s Tigercam.

But the idea of living among ferocious beasts isn’t far-fetched to Felicia Johnson, whose Fort Polk neighbors once kept the big cats. As BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo education curator, Johnson helps Louisianans understand the habitats and needs of animals in the zoo’s collections and in their own. These days, the wild world of animals is as close as the pet store. Since selling puppies and kittens has fallen out of favor with reputable retailers, an exotic inventory keeps customers intrigued.

All over town, snakes, chinchillas, African scorpions, tarantulas hedgehogs, hissing cockroaches, exotic frogs, lizard and fish are displacing bunnies, hamsters and goldfish as prized pets. Many are impulse buys. So Johnson frequently gets calls from adults and children who realize they don’t know how to care for an animal or insect once they get home.

For example, Johnson says, “A lot of people get chinchillas and think they’re bunny rabbits. But they have to have a colder environment; the temperature always have to be 72 or below — even in the summer.” Conversely, depending on their size and gender, reptiles require a warm environment with heating rocks, dark places to nestle and a sturdy latch to prevent escape.

Even more than providing the proper climate and cuisine, a secure, natural environment and knowing how to detect deadly parasites, owners sometimes need to consider whether their exotic is a real party animal. “People are now getting a degu, an exotic rodent that we have here at the zoo,” Johnson explains. “They do better in pairs because they are used to living in colonies. They get stressed and have a short life span living alone.”

The owner of a ball python herself, Johnson does not dissuade anyone from owning any animal allowed within federal and state regulations. “I would educate — more than encourage or discourage. I would give (a potential exotic owner) the facts. The essence of owning an exotic is providing the best care for that animal and, for that to happen, you have to find out everything you can. Reptiles and mammals need totally different things provided to the animal every day.”

Even though his property arguably harbors the parish’s largest collection of exotics outside the zoo, Alligator Bayou co-owner Jim Ragland doesn’t recommend exotic pets. It’s a perspective that seems too opposed to his interactive tour that encourages visitors to handle alligators, nutria, possums, Texas rat snakes and even bobcat kittens.

“The reason we have (these animals) is we’re trying to protect their habitat and teach lessons,” Ragland says. “We try to use them as an educational opportunity and get people to recognize they are not what they think they are in terms of pets.”

Ragland and Frank Bonifay acquired Alligator Bayou for environmental conservation. “I wanted to save a piece of land being destroyed and make it a venture. A swamp tour seemed like a good idea because it has a small footprint,” Ragland says. They quickly realized visitors wanted to see native wildlife. Since the bayou’s wildlife was scant, their first gators came from Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The menagerie of injured and orphaned animals grew from there.

In case the contact with the grinning baby alligator and lollypop-licking nutria backfires, Ragland shows animal-infatuated visitors the ruins of his nutria-ravaged gift shop and tells the story of the bobcat habitat to reinforce his point. A Minnesota man sold a female bobcat kitten to a local family as a pet for their children. By eight weeks of age, the wife took the animal to a vet to be declawed because the cat had become food aggressive. Fortunately, the vet suggested giving the animal to the Ragland’s refuge, which already included a male bobcat who could not be returned to the forest after being hit by a car in Iberville Parish.

“When it’s young everything is cute and sweet and then it becomes what it is supposed to be,” Ragland says. “(Wild animals) are conditioned to hunt, scratch, growl and destroy things. You really don’t want one. It would take generations to be bred so you could have it as a pet and, at that point, you basically have a dog or a cat.” Whether it’s declawing a bobcat or de-scenting a ferret, Ragland says, “If you’re changing an animal to live with you, there’s something wrong with that picture.”

While guests forever regale Ragland with stories of relatives or friends who successfully “tamed” a wild animal into a faithful pet, Ragland cautions, “Those stories are one in a million. Don’t think it will happen to you. All you have to do is go online and type in ‘animals gone bad’ and then think about taking in a wild animal as a pet. Siegfried and Roy can tell you about tigers, and the boy from Slidell (who recently lost in his arm in an attack) can tell you about alligators.”

Even more than the dangers associated with exotics, Ragland weighs the benefits of domesticated pets. “Snakes are very innocuous. But where do you get affection from a snake? You have a pet to express and have the capacity of learning about reciprocal love and responsibility,” he says. “When humanity is not what it’s supposed to be, a pet will give you affection — not bite you. If you want something different, find a breed of dog (or cat) bizarre enough to have.”

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Besides her 20 years of experience as an editor and writer, Adrian E. Hirsch is a charter board member of Spay Baton Rouge, a nonprofit that spays/neuters feral cats and the pets of low-income residents to stem overpopulation; the Baton Rouge coordinator of Gulf South Golden Retriever Rescue, a nonprofit that rescues golden retrievers from shelters and owners, fosters and finds permanent homes for the dogs; and (along with her twin daughters) a member of Tiger HATS, an LSU Veterinary School service organization that offers animal-assisted therapy.