The Civic Ethicist Adopts an Exotic Animal

By BARCODE 2x

My wife got me my xmas present early: a two-foot-long Red Tailed Boa named Svengali who now guards our home. The little guy comes from an individual in the area who runs a 10-acre sanctuary for rescued exotic animals. I advocate for animal rescues. We have a small menagerie developing in our house, and I have a serious soft spot for animals. I have a bit of an aversion to cats, and I'm allergic. But in exchange for adopting a snake, I agreed to adopt a kitten this holiday. Marriage is like that.

The snake is now very much at home. He is charming. A friend made a bit of a stink about it, and has told me and others that my snake adoption is an unethical situation. Many people take this stance, arguing that these exotic animals do not belong in human homes. They are wild and how in the world can we provide the proper homes for them?

Michigan is cold. Many reptiles and other exotics need warmth. When I brought the snake into the house, it was 27 degrees outside, and his cage was a toasty 85. I use a heat lamp, a heating pad, and a basking lamp to provide the right environment for this noble beast. My electric bill is going to be really crazy. Over the course of his 30+ year lifespan, I will move him into larger cages, feed him animals that other people might keep as pets, such as rats and mice. The rats are fed to him dead and defrosted. Live rodents can hurt a snake, and can train the snake to become aggressive toward other animals and humans too. We have a house full of animals now. Six in total. A cat, two fish, two dogs, and the soon-to-be monstrous Svengali. I have to be sure we don't raise a psychopath. I don't want to come home one day and find Svengali sitting in my favorite chair watching TV with five big lumps down his body's length.

We want peace and balance, and yet we want to satisfy our urges to provide homes for needy animals. This is definitely an urge for us, not a cause. People with urges go out, as we have done, on hungover Saturday mornings and, impulsively, they adopt animals. The members of the cause foster animals, donate money and volunteer to feed feral cats, and take in animals with all sorts of problems. Our animals are pretty fancy. We are down with the cause, but we have to live with them too. Six is a huge number, for me. I never imagined I would have a small menagerie in my home.

I understand the opposition. There are people out there who think we are doing this for the wrong reasons. Wild animals do not belong in homes. Dangerous animals do not belong in homes. These animals are not wild, however. Our dachshund would not last a minute in the wild. I give our snake better odds. He could own these woods if we let him. But it wouldn't be fair to him. These animals were bred in captivity. They do not come from the wild. I did not catch our Tibetan Spaniel on a safari. I did not illegally poach our Beta Fish. These are animals that we encountered. They were not created to live in homes, that was never in the cosmic, evolutionary plan. Dogs, maybe. But not snakes and fish and the like. Reptiles and fish are for fetishists.

Still. These animals need homes. When you argue that the animals were not meant to live in our homes, you wind up reaching some diabolical conclusions. When you take that argument a few steps further, you begin to interfere with nature in a different way. These animals need homes. Should they be introduced back into nature?

This same argument could lead to the euthanization of animals. The same argument could be extended towards human children, or refugee populations.

I bought the snake from a unique individual. The rescuer is a heroic man with a mission. This man is possessed. He has the equivalent of a small zoo in his home. It is a licensed, insured facility. He works with local law enforcement and does school tours. This very morning he was brought in to the house of a drug dealer to rescue a four-foot alligator. "The alligator was not asked to be born an alligator," he has said in an email. The animal is living. It lives, and therefore is deserving of life. I enjoy the theoretical discussion of whether or not a thing should be domesticated. The wildness of the creature is to be respected, certainly. And our homes are certainly a pale substitute for a jungle environment.

But a domesticated creature comes to us, sometimes many generations after his ancestors left the wild and entered captivity. They are overbred, certainly. Exotic animals such as alligators need control and restraint over the way they are bred and adopted. They do not belong in ordinary homes. Nor do they belong in the wild, not after being domesticated. They could bite a human, and may legally have to be destroyed. But they exist, nonetheless, and animal sanctuaries are the best, most ethical solution to the problem of their existence. Our society is not free enough to allow alligators to roam among us. Not even on a leash.

We can provide a good home for a snake, or dogs, cats, or fish. We are not equipped to handle a dolphin, or anything large or dangerous. The sanctuary exists to preserve the lives of animals without other options. Whether we believe in the domestication of formerly wild species of animals, we have to face that there are animals living who need homes.

The mere fact of a being's existence is what matters. The being exists, and needs to survive, to live, to thrive even, to love, to fulfill its own life. It needs to procreate too, and to make more of itself. It is meant to breed, to reproduce, to create cultures and societies to sustain more life. That is the plan. We intervene and guide their future, when we can. Scientifically speaking, our very existence is so rare and special that the moment we begin to make judgments on the lives of others, we betray our own nature.