I'd just like to mention that I think 'Escalante' is as great a word as 'vermin.'

Ferrets were illegal to keep in MA until fairly recently (along with commercial tattoo parlors), with the argument being that they couldn't be properly vaccinated for rabies. So if you kept a ferret you had to take it to a vet in NH.

I'm not at all sure about the status of snakes as pets, except that I've seen them on sale in pet stores, which would argue for very VERY lax enforcement.

I'm still shocked every time I see a tattoo parlor in MA. In my day, we kept that kind of sinning in New Hampshire, where it belongs!

I'm picturing cows with fangs, wings and claws. And tails with a stinger on the tip that delivers a deadly venom.

Hell's Ungulates.

Hell's Ungulates.

or The Tick's Man-Eating Cow!

The contrast between that and the near-psychotic level of rails and warnings you see in major national parks here really struck me.

You know, it's not entirely consistent. I know in the Grand Canyon walking the rim in some places I was about two feet from an fatal-fall edge with no warnings or rims. Some places they're all "No! Don't go beyond this point! If you go beyond this point then there's the vaguest possible possibility that if it was covered in ice and a strong wind came along and you had poor balance and for some reason were running toward the edge you might fall!" Others, it's "Hey, there's the cliff. Have fun."

In general I'm not bothered by animals eating other animals. That's what animals do. All the biz about domestication and "pets" seems like a wooby net of rationalization. Cats are predators and kill things all the time: mice, cockroaches, birds et al. It's no fun to be prey, of course, and at least in the wild the mice have a scampering chance.

I'm not bothered by animals eating other animals. I am an animal who eats other animals. But I think you're mistaking reasoning for rationalization. You admire gators? Great. Fascinating wild animals they are. They're not domesticated. You think they ought to be able to kill? Sure. They seem designed to do so. They don't seem designed to need your agency.

Massachusetts (of course) has some of the most restrictive pet owning laws in the nation. Because that's what we do, regulate everything. [link] It's our gift.

For purposes of possession, MassWildlife groups animals in the following categories:

Wild animals, for which a permit is required;
Wild animals exempt from MassWildlife permitting requirements; and
Domestic animals (which include some kinds of animals not typically categorized as livestock or fowl, but which MassWildlife considers to be biologically domestic in nature).

Because everything is regulated, some of our regulations seem to make little sense. For example...

In Mass., you can keep:

One-humped camel

Green iguana

Vietnamese potbellied pig

Burmese python

Ferret (non-breeding kind)

(Ferrets are, I believe, a relatively new addition to legal-in-Mass pet category).

In Mass., you cannot keep:

Two-humped camel

Alligator

Wolf-dog hybrid

Prairie dog

Monitor lizard

I've no bloody clue why the one-hump camel is legal and the two-hump camel is not. Here's a [link] with pictures. It was a side-link to an article about an arrest of a man who'd been abusing his girlfriend and her children, oh, and he'd been keeping a black bear in her house for about a year. [link] (reg required for that one, see bugmenot).

I know prairie dogs are illegal to keep as pets in Massachusetts. I know this because my new housemate-to-be has one. (I've been reassured that they don't smell, so that's actually all I care about.)

Edit: heh, x-post

I'm picturing cows with fangs, wings and claws. And tails with a stinger on the tip that delivers a deadly venom.

I'm sure there's SOMETHING in Australia that fits this description.

So I worked on something last week which involved a lot of salary information. I've now had it twice impressed on me how sensitive that information is. Which I totally get, but... apparently people missed the fact that a whole lot of salary information goes through me every month. This is not new territory. Were there a temptation, I'd already know how to resist it. As it is, I don't give a rat's ass. They make tons more than me -- hello, they're doctors!

It was a side-link to an article about an arrest of a man who'd been abusing his girlfriend and her children, oh, and he'd been keeping a black bear in her house for about a year.

Oh yeah - that was in the Globe magazine. I knew I'd read something recently that listed the animals you could and couldn't keep. And, yeah, what's up with the camels?

I love on the way to my sister's in North Yarmouth, ME, that there's a farm with llamas. They make me smile, but I have no idea what noise I should make out the window at them (ala mooing at cows).