I have a bearded dragon who I just love. Her name is Evenrude, and you can see her here. Ignore the first picture. That’s not a lizard, that’s me.
I also have two leopard geckos whom I’m looking for a home for, and 4 fire bellied toads. It’s a neat little zoo that I have.
Odd pets?! Well, HELLO!
Currently in my house -
Dog (Rottie)
Cat and five Kittens. Oops! Thought she was too young…
Dozen or so rats, not counting newborns. One’s a wild Norwegian.
Twenty+ mice
Garter Snake
Alligator Lizard
Hedgehogs (2)
Rabbits (2)
Rose Haired Tarantulla
Baboon Tarantulla
Stickbug
Giant Cockroach
Frog
Salamanders (2)
Budgies (2)
At work I either look after or work around -
American Alligator
Bat
Snakes, from 12" Milks to 15’+ Pythons
Lizards
Sugar Gliders
Turtles and Torties
Mice and Rats, Spiney Mice
Chipmunks
Oppossum
Chinchillas
Ferrets
Giant Pouched Rats
Prairie Dog
Scorpians
Guinea Pigs
Thumping Huge German Sheppard
Cockroaches
Stickbugs
Leafbugs
Frogs
Salamanders
Pirahanas
Giant Millipeds
Gerbils
Hamster
Parrots
Cockatoos
Finches
Cockatiels
Sugar Gliders
We used to have a Kinkajou at work and she was indeed very cute.
At home, I used to have Squirrels, a Flying Squirrel, a Skunk, Ferrets, Degus, Gerbils, Hamsters, Field and Deer Mice, Meadow Vole, several types of Lizard, including Iguanas, Birds, including a Cockatoo, and Guinea Pigs. I’ve probably missed a few past or present residants, but it’s getting late.
Exotic enough for ya? 
!!!
Oh, holy … ! I’ve wanted one of those for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never had the resources to take care of it, never mind I would have probably been breaking the law. I need details!
How “giant” are they, really?
Are they as friendly as your average rat?
What is involved in housing them?
Are they truly pouched, as in, marsupials?
How intelligent are they?
… and so on.
I have always wanted a scorpion, or a Feather-tailed Glider (aka Sugar Glider), but as gliders are native to Australia, there are laws preventing them being kept as pets (unless there are exceptional circumstances) and they don’t live wild in my area so I don’t see them much.
I also find snakes and lizards very attractive, and a previous housemate had some carpet pythons I loved to watch.
I had a pet rock.
I have birds, who I believe may be aliens from another galaxy who are planning to take over when the time is-----aaaaagh!!! Help! They’ve got me!
But seriously, I had a pet roach which I found at a place where I worked. It was such a big, beautiful specimen of roachdom that I couldn’t bring myself to stomp it so I put it in a box (and almost mailed it to a client by mistake), christened it “Gregor Samsa,” and took it home. It wasn’t a very interesting pet. It liked to eat processed sandwich meat but otherwise didn’t do anything worthy of note. I kept it for several weeks in a plastic terrarium and then the landlord came to spray the place, so I took it outside. After the spraying was done I brought it back in but some of the spray residue must have been in the air because the next day Gregor Samsa was dead.
What Davebear said.
Aside from frequent, careful, and gentle handling, you don’t really train snakes. Boas in general are fairly mellow snakes, especially red-tailed boas. I’ve got a Brazilian rainbow boa who is a bit cranky, but so cranky as the majority of pythons I’ve met.
If you’re just considering a snake and not necessarily a boa, there are other, smaller, very flashy looking snakes that take less room, less food, and less bodily strength to handle. Most boid species are fairly largeish, but there are quite a few smaller colubrids such as cornsnakes, kingsnakes, and milksnakes that are quite lovely and not so big.
As for my own zoo, at the moment I’m down to four snakes, and a rat, although at one point, I had a pack of flying geckos, a gopher snake, and a very large saltwater tank. The snakes I’ve got are amelanistic cornsnakes (Ruby and Ziti), an anerythristic cornsnake (Eve), and the brazilian rainbow boa (Ziggy Stardust, aka David Boa. ). The rodent posse used to number in the double digits, but alas they have slowly been getting very old and going off to the big Cheereo box in the sky, and now I’m down to one nekkid rat, named Robert Ratchenburg. It’s killing me that he’s by himself, as rats are such highly social little critters, but I’ve grown tired of going through traumatic pet deaths so often–and I think I’m going to stick with critters with a bit longer lifespan.
Make no mistake, though, rats are far and away the best small animal pets available. They’re very bright, friendly, tidy little critters. Mine knew their names and would come running when I called them. I’d leave the door to their cage open when I was home and they’d run around and cause chaos, but were never really destructive at all. I bred fancy rats for quite a while, mostly blues, tailless, and rexes.
Currently, Mr. Armadillo and I live in Northern California, where practically everything is illegal to keep as a pet. However, we are moving to Oregon in the Fall, at which point I will be getting a pet skunk 
Peace,
~mixie
I was going to chime in and say that a boa can’t be trained – you have to know how they think. Fortunately, they have about two neurons in their little brains, so that’s not a difficult task.
I want a bearded dragon! But I can’t do it right now. Maybe someday.
Err, “but not so cranky as the majority of pythons…”
I also had a couple outdoor pets when I was seven. One was a chipmunk which I taught to take food from my hand. It took me several weeks to accomplish this and I was very proud of myself the first time the chippy trusted me enough to take food from me. There was a shrew in the area which would come toward me making squeaky noises–I would respond by giving it a corn chip, which it would promptly stash under a rock.
When I was about four and a half, I found a cool looking spider in a patch of irises in the backyard. It was red and black and I gave it the brilliantly original name of Spidey. Every evening when my mother weeded the garden I would stand by the irises and talk to Spidey. I would tell him (her, it?) about my day and Spidey would calmly listen and never interrupt my discourse on the state of the world. On day I dumped water on Spidey just to see what would happen. Spidey scrambled away and hid amongst the iris blades for the rest of the day, and I realized that if I wanted him to continue being my friend I must never dump water on him again.
Fall came, and then winter, and Spidey was gone. I thought he’d be back next spring but when I went to the iris patch he wasn’t there. Don’t laugh–for several years, even after I started school, I hoped he would come back. I really missed him. We started keeping praying mantises as pets in the house because they could live in the windowsill and catch flies, and that took my mind off Spidey. Praying Mantises were cool; you could take them to school and show them to off to all your friends. Though finding their remains on the patio once you let them loose in the fall so they could mate wasn’t too pleasant–and I learned the hard way that capturing a bunch of ants and trying to feed them to a baby mantis isn’t a good idea.
I own lots of animals but none of them are unusual pets…though their behaviour is sometimes odd. I do have a friend who collects Australian snakes and lizards. The lizards are cute, but some of the snakes I’m not too sure of. Seeing as Oz has the most poisonous snakes in the world, I’m yet to be convinced they’re OK to play with or cuddle up to.
You won’t get any grass “mowed” by the goat. Goats are browsers, not grazers. This means that they will happily defoliate every tree and bush within reach while allowing the grass to grow above their heads.
They do eat hay (which I find odd, considering) and they eat grain (go for the 12% to 16% protein grain with just a bit of cracked corn–too much corn and it will bloat).
Most feed stores should carry some variety of goat feed.
What variety of goat is it? If it is a Nubian (lop ears hanging down from its head) or a La Mancha (tiny ears), it is going to be LOUD! Saanens, (all white), and the other various Alpine goats (various colors, upright ears), can also make noise, but they are not quite as obnoxious. Pygmy goats are the best behaved–but be careful not to overfeed it.
Oddly, we have the opposite case. We have two Ball Pythons that are great. The younger one is a bit shy, but its former owner had been told to throw a towel on it before picking it up. (!?) The older one is really mellow.
We also have a Dumeril’s Boa, who, while not hostile, is not nearly as quiet as the two pythons. She is very shy and I have had her puke on me when I was not quick enough returning he to her tank, one time.
Our Kenyan Sand Boa (who just died this week) was cute, but she was not as quiet as our larger Ball Python.
I should have mentioned that–most ball pythons (or royal pythons if you’re outside the US) are very laid back snakes, but a lot of them have feeding issues. When someone calls me saying they have a snake that won’t eat, the first thing I ask is if it’s a ball python. 99% of the time, it is. They can go half a year without eating for what seems to the owner like no reason whatsoever, and this can really freak people out.
Also, unfortunately, the vast majority of ball pythons in the herp trade in the US are either wild caught or captive hatched (which is pretty much the same as wild caught), and while it’s possible to find captive bred ball pythons, they’re much harder to find and far more expensive… so I don’t usually reccommend people get them for those two reasons.
But you’re right, they are generally pretty cool-tempered snakes, and there are always exceptions. Like I said, my little male BRB is pretty testy. Three of the four giant boids, African Rock Pythons, Indian Pythons, and Retics are pretty nasty tempered, and in a snake that size, that’s not exactly something I want to mess around with–but Burmese Pythons are pretty laid back. Still, having a pet around the house that could, yanno, eat me is not my idea of a good time 
Peace,
~mixie
I have a bunch of pet peeves. They don’t need to be fed, watered, or taken care of in any way.
You know, I think I knew this in the back of my mind, I was just rationalizing the goat-keeping! 
Fortunately (or not! It’s ugly!), we don’t have a whole lot of ornamentals to worry about. He can prune the roses, I don’t believe they hurt goats, and they’re quite overgrown. I have goat chow to wean him with, and I’ll top dress it with the goat milk replacer when he’s ready.
He seems to be an Alpine; I think he’s probably a male cull from one of the many dairy goat herds around here. A little snip job, and he should be as much of a gentleman as the other Alpine that lives with our cattle. He’s a great pet so far - the kids are loving him. My five year old is bottle feeding him, and I swear, the thing doesn’t know if it’s a dog or a person, or what! “No baby goats in the house!” is our mantra lately. And my mama dog is washing him.
No, he’s not quite the exotic of a snake (which I’ve always wanted too - I love rubber boas!), but he sure is fun! Such a personality!
Boas are nice if they’re laid back. We raised two from babies; one was always cranky and snappish, the other always mellow. The cranky one is now at a breeding farm enjoying reptilian nookie, while the mellow one (all 7 feet of him) is being babied by my former boss; he cuddles on her lap while she’s at her computer each evening. And the neighborhood kids will come over and ask, “Can Zola come out and play?” (Just in the house, I hasten to add!)
It does take some education to handle large snakes, though, even mellow ones; they don’t have enough brains to think, so you have to learn what their instinctive behaviors are and then act accordingly.
From all I hear, ball pythons are great small snakes. If I got another one (which I probably won’t), I’d get a ball python. And I found a great solution to feeding issues when our one boa went on strike – chicken bouillion. Dunk that rat in the bouillion and the snake went CHOMP every time. Kinda grossed out a few friends, though…
Just curious, are hedgehogs “wild” in the states? Because the only time we see hedgehogs here is a) in the dead of night b) squished on the road or c) wandering about in the daylight because they are ill. Granted they are very cute wee buggers but I can’t imagine them as pets.
Then again as a kid I kept common-garden variety snails as pets …complete with names sellotaped on their shells. Yes i was an odd kid.
They are fun, but they are not cheap. I’ve had mine for little under a year, and I’ve probably put in about $1000 bucks. Of course most of that was the cost of the dragon, plus lighting and tanks.
They area blast to own though. Unlike many lizards, they can be trained to actually like people. Most lizards dislike, or at least, are indifferent to people. My dragon will scramble to be taken out of her tank when I get home from school. She will the perch on my should when i walk around, or crul up underneath my blankets and pillow when I lie down.
They are fun, but they are not cheap. I’ve had mine for little under a year, and I’ve probably put in about $1000 bucks. Of course most of that was the cost of the dragon, plus lighting and tanks.
They area blast to own though. Unlike many lizards, they can be trained to actually like people. Most lizards dislike, or at least, are indifferent to people. My dragon will scramble to be taken out of her tank when I get home from school. She will the perch on my should when i walk around, or crul up underneath my blankets and pillow when I lie down.