The Good Neighborhood
Around three years ago, we moved from St. Louis to Cleveland. We got a fine three-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood with access to good schools. To ease the heartache of leaving their friends, I had promised the kids we would get a pet once we got settled. When the time came, we browsed at some chain pet stores, did some online research, and ultimately found ourselves at an exotic pet store a little further out of town. The kids walked wide-eyed around the store, imagining themselves with a pet armadillo or an albino squirrel. I feared I might have overplayed my hand.
Thankfully, they found a beautiful kitten they couldn’t resist. The store manager was a sweet, but rough-around-the-edges type one could easily picture surrounded by reptiles. He explained excitedly the kitten was half wildcat, noting several characteristics that could serve as confirmation. He assured me it could be domesticated and would be no danger. The kids quickly named him Thor, gathered some toys and accessories, and the decision appeared to have been made.
When we got home, the kids began what would become the cat’s standard introduction: “This is Thor. He’s half wildcat!” When word spread to my neighbor, Frank, he came over with a four-pack of beer and some talking points. After we covered what were clearly his wife’s safety concerns, he asked all about the exotic pet store and what other pets they had for sale.
Two weeks later, Frank and his family had attracted a small crowd in their front yard, so I went to check it out. Frank, in his relentless spirit of friendly competition, had bought a juvenile fox and was showing it off with pride. “What are you going to do with that thing?” I wondered. “Says the guy with a wildcat in his backyard,” countered Frank. “Half wildcat,” I quickly corrected him. “Whatever. Vince at the pet shop says he’ll behave well enough after we’ve been feeding him for a while. I’m building him a cage in the back to keep him from running off,” Frank explained. “Make sure he doesn’t get into our yard. I don’t know how Thor would react,” I said before taking one more look at the fox and heading home.
Sure enough, a few months later, Foxy Brown got loose and came looking for food, only to leave with a gash across his flank and a little less of his left ear. Frank took it as a personal affront and set out to take what he thought were the appropriate measures. To everyone’s astonishment, he brought home a fully grown coyote he called Nimrod.
Obviously, Nimrod almost immediately killed and ate Foxy Brown. After the funeral, the people on our block had a meeting with members of the civic association to discuss the legality of keeping a wild coyote as a pet in our neighborhood. Ironically, we learned there were scant restrictions and the meeting backfired. Frank built a new enclosure to meet the basic requirements and brought home a second coyote. He was more than willing to display the required sign on his fence that read, “Beware of Coyotes”. He showed me the sign twice, quite intentionally. Not long after, Eddie, from three houses over, surprised his kids with a mountain lion. They named it Pinocchio, which was surprisingly clever, but did little to ease the neighborhood’s growing concerns about safety. Nevertheless, people continued the dangerous trend.
Every week, I would notice a new sign had gone up on someone’s fence. Danger: Bobcat. Do Not Enter: Baby Bear on Premises. Beware of Dingoes, Etc. Just before the Fourth of July, Dr. Sanders at the end of the block was maimed irreparably while giving his tiger a bath. When Bobby Miller took a leopard cub to the Shop-and-Save the week after that, the civic association called an emergency meeting to discuss increasing restrictions.
The obvious solution would have been to send all the animals to a zoo and implement some logical rules preventing the average person from keeping a dangerous predator in their garage, but people in our neighborhood didn’t see it that way. We threatened to move to Kansas City every time someone lost a leg, or a kid went missing, but we never did. Thor ran away that summer, so we got a fish tank and kept to ourselves for the most part. As it turns out, caring for a hammerhead shark is somewhat of a full-time affair.
- Written for “Wildlife Escalation”