Pet Channel

Are exotic animals replacing people.

Naturally, the trend towards exotic pets as stress-relievers has some folks worried. People like Ruth, Claude, and Morris might be considered "a few sandwiches short of a picnic," as an editorial in the Minneapolis Post and Beam put it. Mental health professionals seem worried, too. "If you notice a common theme here, it's because, more and more, humans are using their relationships with animals as a substitute for learning to live in the real world," according to Dr. Martini Scholes of the University of Southern North Dakota's School of Psychiatry. "Ruth could have taken an anger-management class; instead she adopted a rodent with an attitude. Claude could have built a fence around his garden and installed alarms, but he went with the cheetah. Morris could have sent his son to the Marines, but he got a hippo, which is really a quasi-marine substitute."

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