I think that’s the same responce my mother in law gave us! 
Come to think of it I knew a guy with a skunk for a pet and someone with a racoon. An older couple down the street also owned a monkey. And I worked with a guy who claimed to own a monkey, but he used to tell some crazy stories so I think he was making it up. but they were still damn funny stories.
I dunno, we used to bribe my sister’s quarterhorse into the basement with butterscotch candies. He’d do anything for those: Kinda like ‘Scooby Snacks’ for horses.
We’ve had snakes, scorpions, rats, turtles, geese, cats, dogs, ducks, sheep, and mice, but my hand’s down favorite was the Mexican Pallid bat. He’d eat from your hand (flying or not). Now that’s cool!
I saw an online pet supply store which sold various species of small sharks, but I can’t remember the URL.
Someone’s selling a real live sugar glider on eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=545236882
As the first (I think) poster to post that OWNS sugar gliders, let me assure you that they are MUCH better pets than cats!
I have two sugar gliders, and they rock. They are cute as hell, playful, funny, and they bond to you more so than a cat ever will. They don’t smell, which is one of the complaints I had owning a cat- that litter box stank no matter how often I cleaned it. Well, they smell if you frighten them, but mine don’t get frightened anymore, so I have no problems. I can also carry them with me during the day to the office- they are nocturnal, so I put them in a rock climbing chalk bag and keep them with me (if I want, most of the time the stay home).
They wake up around 7 or 8 (after I’m home and after dinner) and I play with them for awhile, get their food ready, etc. They jump REALLY far, are curious as heck, have very distinct personalities, and are basically a lot of fun. I built a cage for them out of a wardrobe (it’s huge) and they love it. We leave for the weekend and stick extra food in the cage and they are fine.
I place them in between cats and dogs on the difficulty scale of keep, attitude, friendliness, smell, etc. I’ll probably never own a cat again. Sugar Gliders are much better pets. But a dog…yeah, I do want a dog someday.
I think one of the reasons people dispair about them is that when you read about them all you find is negative things about health, lack of vets, etc. But in my experience, those are all worse case scenarios. If all you read about cats was feline leukemia, would you want one? I haven’t had any problems with my gliders (except for getting woken up in the middle of the night a few times - they are nocturnal after all) and I have had many problems with cats before. Give them some slack- they’re cool.
Take care-
-Tcat
In another thread some time ago, someone mentioned someone who owned a pet bobcat.
If by “small” you mean “goldfish sized” they have been around for a while. Since they don’t grow up to be three feet long, they aren’t even all that exotic.
Isn’t there someone here who owns a wolf-dog hybrid?
But still, think of how cool it would be to say “I have a pet shark”
I beg to differ. Our ferret can’t balance the checkbook or do the grocery shopping for me, but he is a great pet! He loves to go for car rides, will sit in the hood of my jacket for hours at a time while I shop, keeps the cats entertained, loves to play, is really comical, and a total sweetheart.
How is this useless as a pet?
Well, for this lady…
Misha, the Horse Who Shares Our Home
I dunno here but two exotic pets I have always wanted were
a tree sloth (almost zero maintence, plants for food and a shower every few days for cleaning and toilet stuff)
or the best a Fruit bat… flies, looks like a small dog, eats fruit and scares the hell out of annoying visitors! I also think it would be a nice pet to travel with, just him hang on the rear view mirror of your car and watch the looks ya get.
Here’s someone who has all sorts of exotic critters for sale(maybe, I don’t know when the site was last updated, so if you actually want to purchase something, you’ll have to contact him to make sure there’s one available:
Some of the stranger lifeforms:
Kinkajous (whatever the hell those are)
Coatimundies (never heard of those either)
Large Spotted Gennets
Servals (apparently some kind of exotic cat, never seen one)
Caracals (another kind of cat)
Ringtail Lemurs
African Bush Babies
Fennec foxes and arctic foxes
Spectacle Caimens(some kind of reptile that looks like a baby alligator)
Sugar gliders look like Pokemon monsters.
Funny you should say that:
actually sugar gliders sound kinda cute.
About the wolf thing: That is creepy. Though it sounds plausible. Wolves are hierarchal creatures. Still. It’s a big risk to take.
Another exotic pet- monkeys.
[quote]
Isn’t there someone here who owns a wolf-dog hybrid?[/quote
Yeah, Zenster does.
My two cents…
The coolest pet I have personally ever had was a panther chameleon. It was the neatest little thing I’ve ever seen. Big googly eyes, weird splayed toes, and a tongue that could shoot out more than his body length to catch insects. They are very difficult to take care of, very fragile as far as climate in concerned, but so alien as to be fascinating. He looked like this:
http://animalark.eapps.com/animal/CamPix.nsf/5ff7233e4ab2f216862569be0069ad47/2f91306981dd42e1852569e6007180fa?OpenDocument
If that link didn’t work, sorry, it’s my first attempt on the boards (a programmer I’m not.)
I also have a friend that has an alligator. He got it when he was a kid, and has had it about twenty years now. The thing is about ten feet long. People have tried to get it away from him, saying it’s dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed in a residential area, but he’s fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and managed to keep it so far. He has a large outdoor enclosure with concrete walls at his house, with a pool for it to swim in. It sleeps on one of those poolside lawnchair recliner things that has a mattress on it. It’s fairly tame, he says, but it makes me a little nervous.
Um, [I’m afraid to ask] what does it eat?
…neighbors?
P.S. I can’t tell which chameleon picture you’re trying to show us, so here’s the Animal Ark Lookup Pictures page–there are several photos of “panther chameleons” listed.
http://animalark.eapps.com/animal/CamPix.nsf/c130d7e3c0eb17e6862569e50022535d?OpenView
Some Google hits for “panther chameleon” list it as “Furcifer pardalis”, some as “Chamaeleo pardalis”.
The ONE exotic pet that I would love to have would be the ringtail cat. These are small relatives of the racoon. They are as cute as can be! I defy you to find an animal that is cuter!
Here’s a link to an owner’s page:
http://members.home.net/petitepaws/ringtailpix.html
Anyway, although I would love one of these things, I would never get one, because I couldn’t guarantee it’s health or safety. But apparently they domesticate easily. (Sigh…) Oh, they’re so CUTE!