KEEPING AN EXOTIC ANIMAL AS A PET DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BALLER. IT MAKES YOU AN IDIOT.

Friday October 21, 2011 at 16:21

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KEEPING AN EXOTIC ANIMAL AS A PET DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BALLER. IT MAKES YOU AN IDIOT.

I’ve been paying attention to the media attention surrounding the unfortunate killing of the released exotic animals in Ohio and trying not to take my anger and bafflement out with my fists. This morning there was a report on NPR relating the events to a book recently published called The Ridge. The story itself contributed to my seasonal nostalgia because the author was in Bloomington, IN, my home for 4 years of my life, and discussed the Exotic Feline Rescue Center (EFRC) in Center Point, IN. Below shows the route from my childhood home (A) to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center (B), a distance of 2 miles.

The EFRC was “founded” in 1991, when I would’ve been in grade 8, 12 or 13 years old. I first became aware of the center’s existence when my mom and I were at the grocery store and saw a dumpy pickup truck in the parking lot with a live black panther stretched across the dashboard. Soon after we found out that a man had moved in near us and was living with three large, exotic cats.

Of course we visited. My parents drove us one weekend afternoon, and we knocked on this man’s door and asked to see his cats. He had what seemed at the time like an oversized doggie door cut into the side of his house and leading into a fairly large (maybe 50’ x 50’) fenced-in area, so the cats could freely roam from the man’s bedroom (he told us) to their outdoor residence.

Throughout high school, I would visit three or four more times, and each time this man (Joe Taft was his name) had rescued a few more animals. He would tell me about how he could no longer travel to New Mexico, but I never asked why. On one visit he instructed me to wait in his living room. He went down a hallway and opened a door at the end of the hall, releasing a bear cub (maybe the size of a midsize dog) into the living room where I stood. It was incredible. The cub barrelled out of the hallway and ran around my feet before Mr. Taft began wrestling with it like a faithful pet. He wasn’t equipped to care for bears, so he was looking for a permanent home for it.

I do not agree with the trade of exotic animals as pets, and when he was a one man show, I had misgivings about Mr. Taft’s motives. However, the center has grown to be a wonderful retirement community for exotic animals who have been neglected and abused, who have suffered declawing and other injuries of domestication. And they’ve provided invaluable volunteer and educational opportunities for high school and college students, and residents of my home town, that would be hard to come by in most places.

Check out some of the cat biographies. Some of the cats’ histories are difficult to read, but the bios also illustrate that these animals could have it much worse.