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Owls
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Why we wanted them: Harry Potter and his trusty owl, Hedwig! Sure if you had a wand and magical powers, you could almost certainly devise a more efficient system for mail delivery than a nocturnal bird that poops pellets of rodent bones. But this is fiction, and it seemed romantic, and wouldn't it be so fun to have your very own?
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Why we no longer want them: As it turns out -- who saw this coming? -- owls are quite high maintenance. "They are quite costly to look after. Ideally you need a 20ft aviary, and that costs about £900," Pam Toothill, of the Owlcentre in Corwen, North Wales, tells the Daily Mirror. Also they can live for decades! The article tells of owls kept in bedorooms and cages, and eventually released into the wild.
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What to get instead: Canaries are often recommended as good beginner birds. They're colorful! They sing! They don't get chest infections in the absence of a 20-foot-high aviary! And they die sometime before you do.
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Racoons
Why we wanted them: A Japanese anime cartooncalled Rascal the Raccoon, which aired in 1977, about an American boy befriending a raccoon is apparently responsible for the entire raccoon population of Japan. And who could blame the Japanese? The American boy looked happy with his American pet. Import away!
Why we no longer want them: Do you have to ask? They're raccoons! The Japan Times reported in 2004: "Owners, fed up with trying to tame the wild species to be cute little critters like the one in the cartoon, dumped them in the wild -- where, lacking a natural predator -- they have proliferated and are now perceived as pests, occasionally damaging crops and bothering people." Some, though, protested a Japanese law that allowed local governments to hunt and kill them. "Some people feel certain animals are cute, and because of this, argue that they should be spared," Kunio Iwatsuki, a professor at University of the Air, told the paper. Will we never learn?
What to get instead: A cat. Or a ferret. Really anything else.
Why we no longer want them: Do you have to ask? They're raccoons! The Japan Times reported in 2004: "Owners, fed up with trying to tame the wild species to be cute little critters like the one in the cartoon, dumped them in the wild -- where, lacking a natural predator -- they have proliferated and are now perceived as pests, occasionally damaging crops and bothering people." Some, though, protested a Japanese law that allowed local governments to hunt and kill them. "Some people feel certain animals are cute, and because of this, argue that they should be spared," Kunio Iwatsuki, a professor at University of the Air, told the paper. Will we never learn?
What to get instead: A cat. Or a ferret. Really anything else.
Turtles
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