back of the pet shop

The sib of a friend was recently on island for a week long visit. We rounded out the week with a number of fun activities on her last day in town including: a yummy Hakka lunch, a post typhoon visit to the harbor complete with visit to the former British consulate, and an evening of shaved ice, a night market visit, and movie watching.

Further posts on the visit may come but for now, I wanted to share one of the highlights of the evening. As listed, one of our stops was a night market. While strolling the streets taking in the sights and sounds, and trying to avoid many of the smells, we happened upon a makeshift pet shop. They offered an interesting assortment of things for sale such as a baby pig, fluffy bunnies, tarantulas and other large arachnids, snakes, snakes, and more snakes, beetles of various sizes, baby hedgehogs, and kangaroo mice. But the best, perhaps, was an animal they were keeping near the back - an adult female raccoon. And it gets better. The price was a mere $800,000 NT (Taiwan dollars). That's roughly $25,000 US . . . for a raccoon. And not just any raccoon, but a North American raccoon brought over from the States and now put on display in a small cage at a hot and noisy night market.

I was mad, to say the least. A raccoon is not a pet! You can not just capture any animal you wish and try to pawn it off as a pet. It belongs in the wild and not in a cage in the city.

A friend spoke to the owner to inquire after the animal, which is how we learned it was brought over from the U.S. She had wanted to pet it but dared not for fear of getting bitten despite the owner's assurance that it was a female raccoon and therefore not aggressive, basically harmless. Seriously?! Why is someone who clearly knows so little about raccoons currently in possession of one? Also upon talking to the owner, he stated the price as being $80,000NT ($2,500US), though the sign clearly had an additional zero. Clerical error by the hand wielding the black marker that denoted the price or tactic to ward off less than serious buyers? Either way, while I am concerned for the animal's well-being, I hope no city dweller is foolish enough to claim her for a pet, though there's bound to be someone roped in by its "exotic" charm.