Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Natalie Marshall and her fiancé, Wayne Rivera, are way past the typical pet owners’ debates over, say, whether dogs are better than cats.
They used to have a wallaby, Jojo, hopping around the house. Jojo is staying with a friend out of town since he escaped to downtown Sweet Home and they learned that wallabies count as kangaroos under the city’s exotic pet ordinance.
Even with Jojo gone, though, they still have their share of odd animals that don’t qualify as exotic under the ordinance.
They have chinchillas, four cavies, large rodents related to the guinea pig, and a pair of tortoises, one weighing in at about 50 pounds. They also have ball pythons, a small variety averaging less than 5 feet in length.
Marshall, 22, grew up around horses, she said, but didn’t get involved with exotic pets until a few years ago. Now she wants to get an exotic animals business up and running, focusing initially on two members of the raccoon family, coatamundis and kinkajous, and marmosets, a small primate.
The marmosets “are the smallest, and we think it’s a good start for an exotic store,” Marshall said.
The two do not intend to raise any dangerous pets, she said.
The city Planning Commission has turned down her request to run the business at her home inside the city limits, but that won’t stop her if she can help it. She and Rivera are now looking outside the city limits for property where they can set up shop.
Their business would include a breeding program with sales over the Internet as well as an education component, through which Marshall could take her animals to schools, libraries and other venues to show them and teach children and the public about the animals. Jojo has already attended a session on unique animals at the city library’s summer reading program.
Marshall and Rivera care for five developmentally disabled residents at an adult foster care facility, she said, and they enjoy looking at and learning about her animals.
She got into exotics while looking for a Siberian lynx online, and she discovered a whole world of them, she said. She found out that wallabies are fairly common as pets.
Rivera operated a pet store in Lebanon, and Marshall worked there. They had 14-foot and 18-foot Burmese pythons, a 5-foot alligator and a 9-foot crocodile. They had all kinds of tarantulas and snakes along with fish and rodents. They sold baby alligators often.
They missed it, Marshall said. “That’s why we wanted to open another store (in Sweet Home), but we didn’t realize we had so many laws.”
“I just think exotic animals are awesome,” she said, and that’s what the idea of the store is all about, “the animals. Why else would you be in a pet store? They’re wonderful creatures.”
Marshall grew up in Sweet Home but took her junior and senior year of high school in Lebanon, graduating in 2003. She has attended Linn-Benton Community College.
When she got Jojo two years ago, she bottle fed him and he would go to class with her at Linn-Benton Community College.
Wallabies are social animals, she said. Jojo loves water, and she gives him baths the same way baths are given to dogs. He eats pellets designed for wallabies.
Eventually, in five to 10 years, Marshall and Rivera hope to have a small zoo, Marshall said. Oregon has a zoo in Portland and the Wildlife Safari at Winston, near Roseburg. Their zoo would provide something closer to home for the people of the Mid-Valley.
Even the small menagerie they have now has attracted neighboring residents to their home, Marshall said. The adult residents in their home also enjoy going outside and picking grass for the animals.
“It’s different, and they like it.”
“We just want to have somewhere to start,” Marshall said. “We’re not going to get to know what a zoo is like unless we start getting animals and raising them.”
Their proposed business would have been the first step. To provide information on potential property, call Marshall at 367-0880.