I’m going to be forced to report this thread if y’all don’t start posting some pictures, dammit! You think just 'cause they’re not kittens you’re exempt?!
I had a duck for a while. It wasn’t an outdoor, swims in the pond pet duck, it was an actual houseduck. However, I hadn’t intended to keep her but she turned out to have had an injured wing when she as a duckling. It wasn’t noticeable because it wasn’t out of place but when she matured it was obvious that the wing was crippled so I couldn’t release her … she’d be a sitting duck. I asked around and no one else had a place for a crippled duck. In the meantime she lived in my spare room and I’d take her out to the back yard for walks and bug hunting and swims in the kiddie pool. Finally I discovered the local SPCA had an enclosure for farm animals and they had a couple other crippled ducks so I took her out there.
I like animals, was a wildlife rehab foster mom, am a sucker, and have a grand total of 8 indulged animal-loving step & ex-step kids. As the female head of household, I’m currently enjoying having just cats at home for the first time in my adult life. The wild ones were not “owned” by me, of course, but they were raised (at least into early adolescence) by me, lived in my house or backyard, and I paid for their feed.
The top of my head list includes:
1 desert tortoise
14 (full) wolf pups
6 red fox kits
2 coyote pups
4 raccoons
a bazillion fancy rabbits
1 red boa
1 kaybab squirrel (3 weeks – does that count?)
1 regular squirrel (Red? Gray? Whatever kind gets orphaned in Denver Colo)
boatload of misc. lizards
1 ball python
assorted unusual livestock (emu, fainting goats, mini horse, exotic ducks & chickens)
If you include babysitting for a few hours at a time:
A baby chimpanzee, a baby Orang, and a Roo.
Plus normal, boring cats, dogs, rodents, fish, horses and cows. No birds or guinea pigs, for some reason.
I don’t think I missed anything.
Every living thing, including stepkids and husbands have to be fed. I never really thought about it – I just found out what they needed & gave it to them. I had professional guidance on dietary requirements for the really unusual ones. For the not-superweird critters – Purina makes an astonishing variety of Critter Chow.
Reptiles are the most difficult to keep healthy in regards to food & environment. Racoons can completely destroy your house, but they’re hilarious until adolescence hits. The kangaroo scared the hell out of me, because I know nothing about them. Foxes are a lot like funny-looking kittens, and are a right royal bitch to housetrain. Emus, tortoises & red boas are bad tempered, and fainting goats don’t as often as I had hoped. The Orang & Chimp were just like babysitting a human baby who can hold on better. They may have had special formula, but the little jars were Gerber from the grocery store & normal Pampers.
I have very little interest in baby humans, but I’m very good at Bringing Up (tending & socializing) Baby critters. 
I feel your pain. I have a cockatiel who is like a child. She gets 4-6 hours out of the cage a day, special parrot treats and fly arounds.
In winter when it’s cold, she squooches under my shirt and stands on my underwire, pressing her little chest against me and will stay there for as long as I let her. I have actually forgotten she was there and walked out of the house. She tap dances across my keyboard when I’m trying to type, and tries to force her head in my ear when she’s on my shoulder. Her favourite game in the world is to stand on the shiny side of an old cd and play “Try to peck that other cockatiel’s eyes out!”
She makes contact calls when I"m in the kitchen and Must Eat Dinner At Exactly The Same Time As Me. She has her own swimming pool when it’s hot and she loves trying to get her little potato body entirely submerged and then play “loving on the cockatiel mum because she gave me a swim!”
Do I sound smitten? I totally am. She is messy, noisy, demanding and I wouldn’t change her for the world.
I’ve had unusual pets in the past - python, hedgehog, hermit crabs, tarantulas, and a few other things.
My most recent pets were two adorable fire-bellied toads (J.T. and Phil.)
They were stolen along with everything else in the house last summer.
We lost almost everything, literally thousands of dollars worth of electronics and jewelry, etc., but losing those 2 silly little toads hurt me more than just about everything else. They were the sweetest things ever. They barked like 2 tiny little dogs. I’m sure the bastards that stole them let them die, and it just breaks my heart.
one million dust bunnies.
In order to save electrons, here is a photo album rather than links to individual pics.
The Elkhound about a third down isn’t/wasn’t ours and I don’t remember from whence the picture came, the other Elkhound was ours (a tragic victim of dysplasia).
By popular request: Pinfeather Photos.
Sailboat
The ones here are not chameleonic, and they’ll eat all night long. Some walls are covered with them, too. I find them very cute. Way back when I was living up North in a teakwood house, I had many inside. My evening entertainment was often watching them chase bugs. We don’t have any inside here, which is good, because they’d starve; no bugs in our place here.
So, where can I get a tribble?
currently:
1 iguana
2 uromastyces (or whatever the plural is of uromastyx)
2 royal/ball pythons
1 dumeril boa
4 rats
3 LaMancha goats
2 Pygmy goats
5 LaMancha/Pygmy cross goats
At different timers in the past:
2 Bearded dragons (not simultaneously)
2 White’s frogs
2 anoles
2 leopard geckoes
1 Kenyan sand boa
A bunch more rats
Adding to list of previous:
3 African millipedes
2 Asian millipedes
1 red-footed tortoise
1 box turtle
1 greek tortoise
(numerous cats and 4 guinea pigs and 4 horses omitted per OP)
Awww!
I have a couple of budgies that I mist-netted in the suburban jungles of central NJ. George and Martha Bickersons. Martha should have been named Martin. Oops. They free-fly in my bedroom and roost there in a drfitwood-fake wisteria tree. They trust me not one whit despite my briberies of yummy millet They probably resent me highly for kidnapping them from their House Sparrow gang. Sparrow calls (TV or outside) sets off a chorus of mimicked pleas from the both of them: Help us! Free us! Save us! Oh well. i know they would not have survived the winter, plus I get a huge amount of enjoyment waking up to their chattering and watching their antics. And, slowly I am winning them over. I can now get my face about 8 inches away from them. My hands (that DARED to hold them!)- forget it. Oddly, they seem fascinated with my feet. 
At work, I had a terrarium of Toxorhynchites. female male female drinking raisin juice and a little video showing the female doing her little circle flight to shoot eggs into the dark patch behind her.
And, yes, they are a little larger than your average mosquito.
While I will acknowledge there are rare exceptions, I think keeping, normally, wild animals as pets is only some kind of ego trip and is, in most cases, cruel to the creatures involved.
I never had them as pets. But at one time I had a conservatory for wild cats under 40 pounds. We were mostly a foster home though we did keep some of them for years.
Local critters ran strongly to raccoons (no, they are not cats but we took them in anyway – once the exotic vets know you are there the phone starts ringing) and bobcats. There was a short run on Asian Leopard Cats when everybody and their mother wanted to breed Bengals. Bobcats, servals and caracals are lovely and it is hard not to turn them into a companion animal (not a pet; a wild cat cannot in my own opinion be a pet). Raised a litter of bobcats once to adolesence for wild release. Mommy bobcats work hard, that’s all I have to say about that.
I have also had a number of half breed cats, though none of them were related to my own wild cats as I recall.
When it comes to predators anyway, I have to agree with this:
I used to get calls pretty regularly from people who wanted to know where to get a tiger cub to keep in an apartment. ahem
Wow, that is just crazy.
I would love to own a chinchilla and a ferret. cool sounding creatures.
My canary was strangled by thieves when I was 13. The earrings I don’t care about… but what had the poor bird done!
Well, you see…he was going to sing like a…
No! I can’t do it. I’m sorry for your birdie friend.
As you wish.
How do you deal with his constant attempts to sell you car insurance, though?
Awwww! S/he looks just like my little Auryn, all growed up. Well, if Auryn hadn’t perished during a tragically hot week when her humidifier died whilst I was away and she dried out. Baby snake jerky. It was horrible.
Thanks for the pics, everyone! I feel much better now.