McGinn: Why would you want a pet that could eat you?

McGinn

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AP Photo A sign on I-70 warns motorists last month that exotic animals were on the loose near Zanesville.

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 9:38 AM Friday, November 4, 2011

I’ve lived here in the Midwest all my life, but only now have I come to appreciate what makes it such a great place.

It has everything to do with the sanctity of life — my own.

I value the fact that I can, should the mood arise, take a walk in the woods and not have to worry about having my head separated from my neck by a mother grizzly bear.

I always assumed that, by choosing to stay in the Midwest, my parents wanted me and my brother to alternately sweat or freeze our butts off within a span of mere months, or to never see Oscar-worthy films on the day of their actual release.

It turns out they just wanted us to live a life free of animal attacks.

Had I grown up elsewhere, who knows what could’ve happened.

Had we been raised near some mountains instead of just a boring old soybean field, I might’ve been mauled by a cougar or gored by an elk by now.

And I thank God daily that I wasn’t brought up near a rainforest in some other section of the world.

As a kid, I always had this recurring fear that a squirrel would leap onto my back as I rode my bike under a tree.

At the worst, though, I thought maybe I’d lose an ear or maybe just a large patch of hair or maybe I’d contract rabies — but only two or three people die from rabies each year in the United States, so the odds were always in my favor.

Now, imagine being a kid in Belize.

If you’re riding your bike and a jaguar jumps on your back, I’m sorry, you’re screwed.

But at roughly the same time that I finally learned to start loving the Midwest — I’m convinced those guys with Confederate flag stickers on their trucks are just in need of a quick refresher course in history and geography — our way of life has become as endangered as a Sumatran tiger.

I like how, when settling this region in the 1800s, white people pretty much killed everything that could kill them.

I don’t like how people are now bringing various species of man-eating animals into the state under the guise of exotic “pets.”

Actually, allow me to clarify.

I don’t care what you keep at home.

I just don’t want it to get loose.

And, as we’ve seen in recent weeks, whether by accident or on purpose, these animals sometimes do get out.

The incident over in Zanesville turned out about as well as it could, with 49 of 56 killer beasts shot on site before they could wander too far off.

I still marvel at what that guy had — 18 Bengal tigers?

Aren’t there only, like, 20 left in the wild?

And some dude in Ohio had 18 of ’em?

Then came news that there’s supposedly a black panther on the loose closer to home, near New Carlisle.

What’s next?

A Kodiak bear in South Vienna? An anaconda in Enon?

I like the idea of nature hikes.

I shouldn’t be made to feel like a tapir at a watering hole for going on one.

I guess I just don’t get why someone would want to keep something as a pet in the first place that, given an opportunity, would consume them.

I have a regular cat — and I’m scared of it.

Every so often, I’ll yell at our cat for scratching the carpet, only to find myself apologizing profusely afterward as I think, “Please, oh please, oh please don’t pee in my shoe.”

I can’t imagine having to reprimand a leopard for kneading the living room rug.

“Please, oh please, oh please don’t rip out my neck and drag my carcass up into the tree.”

Let me reiterate something, though.

I’m not necessarily against the private ownership of exotic animals.

I just think it should be limited to sharks and the like.

So go ahead. Get yourself a hammerhead or a narwhal.

That way, if their tank breaks open, they won’t get far.

That’s a win-win — something that could kill you but won’t kill the neighbors.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

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