The Pet Offensive

Last spring monkeypox, a smallpox relative that in Homo sapiens causes fever, aches, swollen lymph nodes, lesions, and occasional death, made its debut in the Western Hemisphere, having migrated from the rainforests of Africa to Phil's Pocket Pets of Villa Park, Illinois. Although smallpox vaccine offered people moderate protection, at least 73 in six states were sickened. The Centers for Disease Control traced the virus to pet prairie dogs infected by Gambian giant rats shipped from Ghana to Texas, the national septic tank of exotic wildlife. On June 11, 2003, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the importation of African rodents and the sale of prairie dogs.

The media went on and on about danger to humans but scarcely mentioned danger to native ecosystems. Black-tailed prairie dogs, sucked out of their tunnels for the pet trade by giant vacuum trucks, have been petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act. What will happen to wild prairie dogs if infected pets were released—as they undoubtedly were, because the alternative was euthanasia? Moreover, black-tailed prairie dogs are a keystone species—they feed and/or provide habitat for a wide range of birds, reptiles, and mammals, including the gravely endangered black-footed ferret.

The monkeypox fiasco illustrates how unregulated is the wild-pet trade, most of which is illegal anyway. Today the legal trade in exotic wildlife is a $20 billion-a-year business. The illegal trade is nearly as profitable as drug trafficking; and it's safer, because if you get caught, it's usually a misdemeanor. You're unlikely to get caught, because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has but 92 inspectors to handle some 121,000 declared wildlife shipments a year (up from 74,620 in 1992). What's more, current laws are ineffective. For example, the intent of the Endangered Species Act to protect domestic and foreign wildlife from commercial exploitation has been twisted by loopholes that permit listed species to be transferred as "gifts" and sold in state.

"I call it ecological imperialism—raping third-world countries so first-world people can have cute animals in cages," declares Mark Pokras, who directs the wildlife clinic at the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, Massachusetts. Recently he visited "wildlife rehabilitation centers" in Brazil, but not the kind that tend Canada geese with broken wings. "Just one center outside Vitória gets 35,000 animals a year—lots of tortoises, snakes, parrots, small cats, most listed under CITES [the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora]. We don't know if that's one percent of the illegal pet trade or ten percent or one-tenth of one percent. We don't know where the animals are coming from. They can't be returned to the wild, because they're malnourished or diseased."

The reasons the public lusts for exotic pets include the desire to appear macho, chic, prosperous, or just shocking. Animal Finders' Guide, the advertising flagship of the wild-pet industry, offers mutations such as five-legged ungulates. When the TV show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted in Great Britain, one wild-pet dealer reported a 400 percent increase in turtle sales. Some wild pets, especially monkeys and apes, are adopted as surrogate children. They're christened, bottle-fed, diapered, dressed, and wheeled in baby carriages. But as the animals mature, the clothes restrict motion, atrophying muscles. Toilet training fails, and they begin to throw their feces. They masturbate in public, so they are spayed or castrated or confined in cellars and attics. They bite, so their teeth are extracted. They catch human diseases—measles, mumps, TB, shigellosis and hepatitis A—so many die. Survivors are often taken back to the pet dealer, who allows that while he can't give a refund, he'll be glad to find the pet "a happy home," then sells it again.

Anyone with a credit card and an Internet connection can buy wolves for $1,000 each, cougars for $1,500, tigers and lions for $1,800, baboons for $4,500, snow leopards for $12,000, gibbons for $20,000, chimps for $50,000. But few who purchase wild pets have even rudimentary training in animal care. On winning the bidding for four bears at the Noah's Land Wildlife Park auction, near San Antonio, Texas, a woman, shrieking coos of affection, reached into the cage to stroke one of her new pets. Whereupon it bit off half her hand. A search for the severed digits was unfruitful because the bear had eaten them.

Although the industry is thriving and scarcely inconvenienced by regulations, it perceives itself as exploited and abused. "Do people put you down because your pet isn't a socially acceptable cat, dog, or goldfish?" demands the National Alternative Pet Association."Discrimination based on your choice of a pet is still discrimination. . . . Are you tired of extremists making the word 'pet' a dirty word?" And according to Animal Finders' Guide, the "real agenda" of the feds in banning the sale of prairie dogs after last spring's monkeypox outbreak was to test distribution of smallpox vaccine as a counterterrorism measure. "They calmly used our industry as an excuse to test their systems, not worrying even a little about what damaging effects and repercussions this would have on our industry."

After surfing the Web and coming up with the above prices, I attended the wildlife auction at Hall's Double H Ranch in Jackson, South Carolina, last August 22. There were about 300 people in the auction barn. They wore mesh-topped caps and cowboy hats and sleeveless T-shirts, carried heaping plates of French fries and ice cream, and towed loud, dirty children. A lemur, with a diaper taped to its butt, crouched on a woman's shoulder. Another woman cradled an ungulate I couldn't identify. High-gloss totem poles featuring Indians themselves, instead of their gods or wildlife, leaned against the walls.