In Pennsylvania, a permit is required to own exotic animals such as wild birds, big cats, bears and other mammals. The laws are enforced by he Pennsylvania Game Commission. Personal ownership of primates is illegal.
Applicants must provide proof that they have had two years of training handling a particular animal. They also must provide a letter from their municipality stating that their ownership of, say, a lion or wolf hybrid does not violate local laws. For example, Shaler has an ordinance that prohibits ownership of poisonous or constrictive snakes, as well as cheetahs and baboons.
Americans have a dangerous fetish for wild animals, says the filmmaker whose documentary on the subject opens in Pittsburgh on Friday.
Michael Webber spent nearly two years filming "The Elephant in the Living Room," a look at people who keep lions, tigers or venomous snakes as pets and the industry that supplies them, often by exploiting abundant legal loopholes.
"I didn't quite believe that this could be true, that there are areas in this country where you have to have a dog license but nothing for a lion or tiger," Webber says.
Venomous snakes can be purchased on the Internet. In the film, Webber visits an large exotic animal auction in Mt. Hope, Ohio, where bears and hyenas are for sale. He also visits the Northwestern Berks Reptile Show in Hamburg, Berks County, where puff adders and other deadly vipers are legally sold. This year's show is scheduled for April 30.
"The Elephant in the Living Room" follows police officer and animal handler Tim Harrison, who has helped capture stray cougars, pythons and tigers in the Dayton, Ohio, area. He wrote two books about his wild times and close calls. Harrison has pulled pythons from ceilings, snared 10-feet-long alligators and intervened in time to save two young boys who were handling a snake that turned out to be a West African gaboon viper, one of the deadliest snakes on Earth.
Harrison blames this pet roulette on a culture that depicts wild animals as cuddly or cool. Chimps and leopard cubs are a sure-fire crowd pleaser on late-night talk shows. The April issue of Vanity Fair features "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson with an alligator draped around his neck. "The Crocodile Hunter" featured the late Steve Irwin handling crocodiles and poisonous snakes. "The last tiger I took off the street of Dayton, Ohio, I asked, 'Why on earth did you get this?' " Harrison says. "They said, 'I saw it on Animal Planet.' "
People who buy a critter on a whim don't realize the time, expense and expertise required to care for them, Harrison says. Owners frequently abandon animals when they become too large and dangerous to care for, leaving a problem for law enforcement or humane officers to handle. "When you buy something like this you're signing a death warrant," he says. "One of you is going to be killed. Ninety percent of the time, it's the animal."
He's seen the other 10 percent. When Amber Mountain, 8, of Irwin was suffocated by her father's Burmese python in 2002, Harrison says he helped counsel some family members.
"A car accident, that's something you can wrap your mind around," Harrison says. "You can't wrap your mind around your daughter or granddaughter or niece being constricted to death by a python from Asia."
The glut of abandoned exotics can overwhelm shelters, sanctuaries and humane societies. There are an estimated 7,000 captive tigers in the United States, more than the total number of wild tigers in Asia, according to Debbie Leahy, captive wildlife regulatory specialist of the Humane Society of the United States.
"It's a huge problem across the country," says William Sheperd, a veterinarian and founder of the Western Pennsylvania National Wild Animal Orphanage, a sanctuary in Redstone, Fayette County, where abandoned tigers, cougars and lions are cared for. "It's so varied from state to state as to what is allowed and not allowed. It would shock you to know what somebody has in their basement next door to you -- an alligator, a gaboon viper, a cougar. "
During its 25-year lifetime, a lion or tiger could cost its owner a quarter of a million dollars to feed, Sheperd says.
Humans who live in close contact with animals also risk contracting such diseases as salmonella or Herpes B virus, which is carried by some primates and can be fatal to humans. Making "The Elephant in the Living Room" required Webber to tramp through animal feces and crouch in cages near animal carcasses. He says he contracted a virulent skin disease in 2009 that baffled doctors and confined him to his house for six months.
"It was awful. I looked like the Elephant Man," he says.
His body finally returned to normal after he was treated by a veterinarian.
"You go into this, and you're worried about being attacked by a tiger or constricted by a python or bitten by a poisonous snake. But in a sense, it was something more sinister."
Exotic animal dangers aren't always obvious
Whenever a tiger or bear kills its owner, a common reaction is for some to ask what went wrong. Michael Webber, director and producer of "The Elephant in the Living Room," thinks he knows. "I'll tell you what went wrong," he says. "Someone took a chimpanzee in their house and raised it like a boy. Someone put a tiger in the basement and raised it like a domestic cat. Someone took a python and kept it in their home."
Born Free USA, an animal advocacy group, recorded a total of 1,474 exotic animal escapes or attacks from 1990 to 2010. That includes 75 deaths, including at least three in Pennsylvania.
Among them: In 2006, Sandra L. Piovesan of Salem, Westmoreland County, was attacked and killed by her nine pet wolf-dog hybrids. Piovesan had a license to keep the animals.
In 2009, Kelly Ann Walz of Saylorsburg, Monroe County, was killed by Teddy, a 350-pound bear she had raised from a cub. It attacked her while she was cleaning its cage. The attack, witnessed by Walz's two young children, prompted state Rep. Ed Staback (D-Lackawanna/Wayne) to introduce legislation on March 14 to ban the personal ownership of exotic animals, including big cats, bears, wolves and nonhuman primates, as pets in Pennsylvania.
Tim Harrison, a police officer and animal advocate who is featured in "Elephant," founded Outreach for Animals, a group dedicated to educating people about the hazards of keeping wild animals. Most owners genuinely love their exotic pets, Harrison says. But they're not doing them any favors. "People are loving these animals to death. He's not supposed to be in your house. He's supposed to be running on the Serengeti plain."
Owners of exotic venomous snakes shouldn't count on getting anti-venom if they're bitten. Most hospitals stock anti-venom that can treat bites from species of snakes native to the state, such as copperheads and rattlesnakes. But someone who is bitten by their pet green mamba, as happened in Penn Township in 2002, may have to wait until anti-venom is flown in from another city.
In 2003, Harrison's friend, Dayton firefighter Michael Peterman, was bitten by an African rhino viper he kept as a pet. Anti-venom was flown in from Florida but Peterman, 48, died before it could be administered.
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