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On cats and snakes...with additional meerkat!
As I was driving home - or rather, balancing my car on the clutch in the stop-start that is friday night traffic on the A34 - listening to Chris Zico yowling away over the stereo, I realised that I had three dilemmas.
One: Do I risk quitting a job that, if nothing else, pays a half decent wage, and that I know I can do well, and where I can do a great deal of good... for one that pays less, and is more risky? Do I chance everything on the impression I have of a young man?
Do I, in short, trust him enough to take an enormous risk?
After all, if it all goes tits up this time I won't be able to go back to that practice... but then, would I want to?
Taking a risk on the job front hardly did me any good last time. But this is a different person, different situation... have I learned from the past, or has it just made me afraid?
Two: Due to bloody awful traffic, would the pair of royal pythons in a box on the back seat be OK for the journey home? Cold night. And the heater in my car is good, but they need to be kept warm.
And... *cough*... yeah, they're my snakes. Suffice it to say that if I go missing after Slay finds out, I'll probably be in bits under the patio.
Three: I needed a pee.
I met a meerkat today.
Yeah, those things that live in groups in the desert and look cute and live in family groups doing cute stuff for the cameras.
And when I say 'met' I don't mean it had a sniff at me through the bars of a cage. I mean it scratched my boots and peed on my shirt and snuffled in my ears and growled at me when I gave it a mealworm met.
See, Chris has this dream.
There are a lot of 'exotic' mammals (and reptiles, but for the moment we'll just talk mammals) that actually make better pets than the ones that are usually kept as pets. Take lemmings and hamsters.
Hamsters are savage little sods. Nocturnal, noisy, and they smell. (OK, I'm sure you all know exceptions to the rule but I'm talking generally here.) Lemmings (Lagurus lagurus, the steppe lemming, which is wot I keep and are actually a type of vole) seem to have a perpetual hour-on-hour-off activity cycle, they chatter a lot but aren't too noisy, and they. Don't. Bite. Plus, as they come from an arid region (the steppe, duh) then they have highly concentrated urine and dry faeces and thus do not stink like hamsters do. (As long as you clean them out regularly!)
Plus you don't get the fear biting that you do with hamsters, because lemmings are afraid of nothing. They're also not too bright, which is why (a) they're at the bottom of the food chain and (b) they're easy to live with. Stupid animals are easy. Smart ones are hard.
And rabbits. Do not get me started on bloody rabbits. If you can spend the time getting diet and environment and interaction right then yeah, they make good pets. But you need to spend as much time and effort on them as you do a dog, and not keep them in a hutch at the bottom of the garden and ignore them a lot.
Do that, and you end up with the sort of creature that has inspired more than the occasional rant on this journal in the past.
And maggots.
*Shudder*
Anyway. Chris wants to set up a facility where different species of exotic mammal suitable for the pet trade can be bred, and the information on how to care for them can be distributed to anyone who wants it.
Also at this facility, an opportunity for people to interact directly with the species that can be kept, but that don't necessarily make good domestic pets.
For instance:
Meerkats... and rhinos. (He has a thing about rhinos. Don't ask me why.)
Like a private zoo, but more personal. He calls it an 'animal interaction experience centre'.
(Which, from what I can gather, is kind of like a petting zoo but the animals are weirder.)
I appear to have wandered from the subject. Anyway, he has a fairly astonishing private collection of animals at home, and recently acquired a female meerkat. She isn't very tame - she's zoo surplus, I suspect - but he wants to breed from her, so that not only does she have company, but the babies will be tame enough to sell to to other like minded people.
Hence the male meerkat brought to the shop today by a friend of Chris'. He was hand reared, and interacts with people just fine - as long as you don't try to take his food away from him.
So I had a wiggling, squaking armful of meerkat - and it was the most amazing experience. He scrambled up my shoulders, snuffled in my ears, bounced on me, insisted I put him down, scratched at my boots, squeaked and growled at me until I helped him move things so he could look under them to see if there was anything edible there.
He's a bundle of perpetual motion, an eating machine - and just about the cutest thing ever.
Mind you, I wouldn't have one. They make the most high-maintenance dog look like a hermit. Intensely social is one way of putting it...
If people could have the sort of experience I had today, I am quite sure it would have a very positive effect on them. There is something astonishing about having an animal like that be so totally accepting of you, to see its natural behaviour (no matter how unnatural the setting) - just incredible. If you combined that with displays about their natural habitat and how you can help avoid fucking it up, I reckon you could do a lot of good.
And all the animals that would be there would be captive bred, either on site or zoo surplus; zoos destroy a lot of animals every year that they simply do not have room for. They breed them because baby animals bring in the visitors... and then with some species, the young vanish at the end of the summer.
Why not turn a very negative situation into a positive one?
Anyway, that's his dream. I'm cynical enough to think that although it's a great idea, the majority of people are way too stupid to see the point, and there will be trouble with the Animal Rights mob; however, I do think that captive breeding more exotics for pets is a good one. A lot of these species make far better house pets than a dog; Gambian pouched rats, f'rinstance.
Lemmings. Baldie mice and rats, dwarf African (I KNOW) hedgehogs. Dormice, harvest mice, multimammate mice, christ - the list is endless. And that's just rodents. Armadillo anyone?
Although the boss and I have agreed to disagree about skunks. They may make good pets, but as far as I'm concerned if something needs surgical intervention to make it possible to live with, then that puts it firmly on the 'no' list.
Anyway, a good rule of thumb as to whether something is likely to make a good pet is if it's lazy, stupid, easy to breed, sociable, and will eat most things... or at least something commonly available!
Or if it isn't sociable, at least sociable enough to cope.
Which brings me to cats. Or at least, to one cat.
Webster.
Webster loves snakes. He's found Sam The Bastard for me twice, and has pointed out several more; if he's glaring with idiot intensity at a patch of Stuff, you can pretty much figure that something snakey is happening on, under, or in it. And he's first on the bed to help when I get any of the boxes down, or am cleaning out the various ophidians. And no, his interest doesn't seem to be food-motivated; he seems fascinated, but not in the same way he is by a bird, or a mouse.
However, there is a limit to his interest.
If a snake hisses at him, he legs it.
He's petrified of Zico; the first time he heard the full on song-and-dance of a bull snake threat display he about wet himself and hid in the garden for hours. Now he keeps an eye on Zico's viv, and bolts if I so much as open the door.
This evening I had Oli the Burm out for a bit, once I'd settled the royals in. Webster, who'd been delighted to meet a couple of new snakes, eyed him warily; he's never too sure about snakes that look at him with interest.
Oli made one of the peculiar hiss-snorts that he makes when he's irritated. Webster promptly vanished in a cloud of dust - all but leaving a Webster-shaped cloud - but when the little hiss wasn't immediately repeated he came back, and watched Oli from the doorway.
Very, very carefully.
Oli either has amazing eyesight or a sense of humour; every now and then he would catch sight of either Webster (by the door), or Eddie (action figure by my computer screen) - and he would snort-hiss again.
Webster would promptly duck back out of sight.
Eddie just ignored him.
I tell you what, my life just gets weirder....
ETA: Just been called by Slay, and 'fessed up to the royals. Slay has forgiven me.
*Phew*
Probably because royals don't get too big - I suspect he thinks himself lucky I haven't come home with an alligator yet!
Hmmm... crocodilians... now there's an idea....
One: Do I risk quitting a job that, if nothing else, pays a half decent wage, and that I know I can do well, and where I can do a great deal of good... for one that pays less, and is more risky? Do I chance everything on the impression I have of a young man?
Do I, in short, trust him enough to take an enormous risk?
After all, if it all goes tits up this time I won't be able to go back to that practice... but then, would I want to?
Taking a risk on the job front hardly did me any good last time. But this is a different person, different situation... have I learned from the past, or has it just made me afraid?
Two: Due to bloody awful traffic, would the pair of royal pythons in a box on the back seat be OK for the journey home? Cold night. And the heater in my car is good, but they need to be kept warm.
And... *cough*... yeah, they're my snakes. Suffice it to say that if I go missing after Slay finds out, I'll probably be in bits under the patio.
Three: I needed a pee.
I met a meerkat today.
Yeah, those things that live in groups in the desert and look cute and live in family groups doing cute stuff for the cameras.
And when I say 'met' I don't mean it had a sniff at me through the bars of a cage. I mean it scratched my boots and peed on my shirt and snuffled in my ears and growled at me when I gave it a mealworm met.
See, Chris has this dream.
There are a lot of 'exotic' mammals (and reptiles, but for the moment we'll just talk mammals) that actually make better pets than the ones that are usually kept as pets. Take lemmings and hamsters.
Hamsters are savage little sods. Nocturnal, noisy, and they smell. (OK, I'm sure you all know exceptions to the rule but I'm talking generally here.) Lemmings (Lagurus lagurus, the steppe lemming, which is wot I keep and are actually a type of vole) seem to have a perpetual hour-on-hour-off activity cycle, they chatter a lot but aren't too noisy, and they. Don't. Bite. Plus, as they come from an arid region (the steppe, duh) then they have highly concentrated urine and dry faeces and thus do not stink like hamsters do. (As long as you clean them out regularly!)
Plus you don't get the fear biting that you do with hamsters, because lemmings are afraid of nothing. They're also not too bright, which is why (a) they're at the bottom of the food chain and (b) they're easy to live with. Stupid animals are easy. Smart ones are hard.
And rabbits. Do not get me started on bloody rabbits. If you can spend the time getting diet and environment and interaction right then yeah, they make good pets. But you need to spend as much time and effort on them as you do a dog, and not keep them in a hutch at the bottom of the garden and ignore them a lot.
Do that, and you end up with the sort of creature that has inspired more than the occasional rant on this journal in the past.
And maggots.
*Shudder*
Anyway. Chris wants to set up a facility where different species of exotic mammal suitable for the pet trade can be bred, and the information on how to care for them can be distributed to anyone who wants it.
Also at this facility, an opportunity for people to interact directly with the species that can be kept, but that don't necessarily make good domestic pets.
For instance:
Meerkats... and rhinos. (He has a thing about rhinos. Don't ask me why.)
Like a private zoo, but more personal. He calls it an 'animal interaction experience centre'.
(Which, from what I can gather, is kind of like a petting zoo but the animals are weirder.)
I appear to have wandered from the subject. Anyway, he has a fairly astonishing private collection of animals at home, and recently acquired a female meerkat. She isn't very tame - she's zoo surplus, I suspect - but he wants to breed from her, so that not only does she have company, but the babies will be tame enough to sell to to other like minded people.
Hence the male meerkat brought to the shop today by a friend of Chris'. He was hand reared, and interacts with people just fine - as long as you don't try to take his food away from him.
So I had a wiggling, squaking armful of meerkat - and it was the most amazing experience. He scrambled up my shoulders, snuffled in my ears, bounced on me, insisted I put him down, scratched at my boots, squeaked and growled at me until I helped him move things so he could look under them to see if there was anything edible there.
He's a bundle of perpetual motion, an eating machine - and just about the cutest thing ever.
Mind you, I wouldn't have one. They make the most high-maintenance dog look like a hermit. Intensely social is one way of putting it...
If people could have the sort of experience I had today, I am quite sure it would have a very positive effect on them. There is something astonishing about having an animal like that be so totally accepting of you, to see its natural behaviour (no matter how unnatural the setting) - just incredible. If you combined that with displays about their natural habitat and how you can help avoid fucking it up, I reckon you could do a lot of good.
And all the animals that would be there would be captive bred, either on site or zoo surplus; zoos destroy a lot of animals every year that they simply do not have room for. They breed them because baby animals bring in the visitors... and then with some species, the young vanish at the end of the summer.
Why not turn a very negative situation into a positive one?
Anyway, that's his dream. I'm cynical enough to think that although it's a great idea, the majority of people are way too stupid to see the point, and there will be trouble with the Animal Rights mob; however, I do think that captive breeding more exotics for pets is a good one. A lot of these species make far better house pets than a dog; Gambian pouched rats, f'rinstance.
Lemmings. Baldie mice and rats, dwarf African (I KNOW) hedgehogs. Dormice, harvest mice, multimammate mice, christ - the list is endless. And that's just rodents. Armadillo anyone?
Although the boss and I have agreed to disagree about skunks. They may make good pets, but as far as I'm concerned if something needs surgical intervention to make it possible to live with, then that puts it firmly on the 'no' list.
Anyway, a good rule of thumb as to whether something is likely to make a good pet is if it's lazy, stupid, easy to breed, sociable, and will eat most things... or at least something commonly available!
Or if it isn't sociable, at least sociable enough to cope.
Which brings me to cats. Or at least, to one cat.
Webster.
Webster loves snakes. He's found Sam The Bastard for me twice, and has pointed out several more; if he's glaring with idiot intensity at a patch of Stuff, you can pretty much figure that something snakey is happening on, under, or in it. And he's first on the bed to help when I get any of the boxes down, or am cleaning out the various ophidians. And no, his interest doesn't seem to be food-motivated; he seems fascinated, but not in the same way he is by a bird, or a mouse.
However, there is a limit to his interest.
If a snake hisses at him, he legs it.
He's petrified of Zico; the first time he heard the full on song-and-dance of a bull snake threat display he about wet himself and hid in the garden for hours. Now he keeps an eye on Zico's viv, and bolts if I so much as open the door.
This evening I had Oli the Burm out for a bit, once I'd settled the royals in. Webster, who'd been delighted to meet a couple of new snakes, eyed him warily; he's never too sure about snakes that look at him with interest.
Oli made one of the peculiar hiss-snorts that he makes when he's irritated. Webster promptly vanished in a cloud of dust - all but leaving a Webster-shaped cloud - but when the little hiss wasn't immediately repeated he came back, and watched Oli from the doorway.
Very, very carefully.
Oli either has amazing eyesight or a sense of humour; every now and then he would catch sight of either Webster (by the door), or Eddie (action figure by my computer screen) - and he would snort-hiss again.
Webster would promptly duck back out of sight.
Eddie just ignored him.
I tell you what, my life just gets weirder....
ETA: Just been called by Slay, and 'fessed up to the royals. Slay has forgiven me.
*Phew*
Probably because royals don't get too big - I suspect he thinks himself lucky I haven't come home with an alligator yet!
Hmmm... crocodilians... now there's an idea....
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http://www.answers.com/topic/meerkat
They're common in zoos - they breed astonishingly well in captivity - although I suspect there probably aren't more than a dozen or so people keeping them as house pets in the UK. How many are in private collections i wouldn't like to even hazard a guess; they're not on the DWA (Dangerous Wild Animal) list in the UK, so you don't need a licence to keep them.
Nevertheless, they're not an easy pet! Charming, delightful - but damn, hard work.
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OMG, really?!? *is horrified* I could have totally lived without knowing that...
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And armadillos? I thought they carried leprosy or something horrible like that. I know they're loathed and despised in Texas and make good boot leather...
As for the job front, do what your HEART tells you.