Forbidden Creatures: Inside The World Of Animal Smuggling And Exotic Pets

There is a problem with the title of this book and it reflects a larger and malign agenda on the part of the author. The author conflates the owning of exotic pets (and how the author views it with a sense of hypocritical disdain), which is odd but the sort of habit that can easily be understood by those of us who love animals outside the norm with the smuggling of animals, which is itself a forbidden and illegal (and immoral) act. There is certainly a good book that could be written from the material that the author includes, but the author really bungles his assignment, and he does so in ways that are both entirely predictable in the contemporary world of reportage and also lamentable. For one, the author is tediously repetitive in his discussion, padding what could have been a pamphlet with repetitious discussions of his own self-serving cliches about how one can’t tame the wild out of a pet that are easily refuted by the experience of, well, pet dogs and cats, to say nothing of pet hedgehogs or guinea pigs (which the author strangely does not discuss). For another, the author considers himself and his own views to be far more interesting and insightful than they really are, a fatal mistake for an author who not only wishes to investigate a subject but wishes to insert himself as the central figure in his investigation as is the common flaw of many biased and idiotic journalists. In addition, the author skips without a great deal of connection from one matter to another, here traveling to a private zoo and anthropomorphizing the animals there through his own biased perspective and viewing it from the point of view of biased public zoos with their hostility towards the ownership of animals and there going to Florida to see how the state deals with the problem of pythons and also struggles over the origin of the python problem as well as its extent, both of which are subject to very wide and fiercely argued differing positions.

One can greatly sympathize with those people whom the author reports who both long to tell their side of the story to a hopefully sympathetic ear but who fear that journalists are degenerate and hypocritical hellspawn who are committed to their own biased opinions and misrepresenting those whom they disagree with (which unfortunately is true of this author). The author’s own rank hypocrisy is clearly evident as he seeks to view himself as ethical because he is a vegetarian even as he cuts turkey for the family on Thanksgiving, and also looking down on the owners of exotic pets as being people who either are too prone to emotionally identify with potentially deadly animals or people on a massive power trip, even as he glories in the lack of understanding he operates from as a pet owner who happily allows his cat to disrupt the local environment. Similarly, he feels at home with the radicals of PETA an all of their casual slanders of the non-coastal parts of the United States and the bio-ethics of the truly repulsive Singer and others of that ilk. Like so many books published in recent times, this book has a worthy and interesting subject but is largely ruined by an author who simply cannot write a thoughtful and reasonably objective book if his life depended on it and who ends up being the worst part of a book that talks about the owners of exotic pets and the world that they inhabit. That is not even to begin talking about the author’s desire for increased laws and regulations to enforce his narrow-minded views on Americans as a whole, which are beneath contempt and not worthy of support or acknowledgement.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit more than 200 pages long and contains 23 short chapters. The book begins with an introduction that seeks to plug the author’s previous book on butterflies and how it led him to examine the exotic pet trade. After that the author talks about the attack of a chimp on a Connecticut woman that was nearly fatal to the woman (1), the case of a monkey smuggling mother and daughter (2), as well as the federal case of a pet owner (3). After this the author talks about pet amnesty in Connecticut and its failure (4), Tippi Hedren’s efforts to stop the sale of big cats while taking care of those surplus to requirements in show business (5), and the bloviations of philosophers Mark Rowlands and Peter Singer (6) with all of the idiocy of bio-ethics. After this the author discusses the crimes of those who seek to protect their roller pigeons (7), talks to those who view chimps as being like children (8), and show how people can be trapped in taking care of demanding pets like chimps (9) even while other chimps find themselves gunned down when they escape (10). The author opines on the wildness of animals (11), attends a wild animal auction in Missouri (12), and also visits a supposed white tiger at a roadside sanctuary (13). After this comes a chapter on animal trafficking (14), the selling of new world snakes by a conscientious Englishman (14), and a discussion about Florida’s python problem from the perspective of a snake seller (15) as well as the Florida pythons in general (16). The author continues with another discussion of a home for tigers (17) before discussing animals with a PETA girl (18), and several chapters on the python infestation in Florida’s Everglades (19, 20). After this the author returns to his theme of how to differentiate between tame and wild animals (21), recounts how he got marked by a tiger while traveling (22), and then fails to understand exotic pet owners in general (23) after his selective and partial account. The book ends with an epilogue that opines that all of us are a little wild as well as acknowledgements, notes, an index, and information about the author.