Like many men before me, I’ve watched Brian De Palma’s 1983 masterpiece
Scarface about a zillion times. Al Pacino’s impossibly badass portrayal of Tony
Montana told me everything I needed to know about ambition, balls, and
responsible recreational drug use. I know I can’t be alone when I say I have about
20 “favourite” scenes, but the one that sticks out for me, more than all the rest, is
the wedding, and I’m not talking about Michelle Pfieffer’s low cut Wedding number
either. Tony walks his bride down to the side of their estate, and show’s him the
great bloody Tiger tied to a tree he bought just for the occasion.
First you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the tiger. The boys
at Swagger got to thinking just how far people go with their animals, and came
up with a list of the five most batshit insane pets a man of Swagger can own. This
is all hypothetical here, so let’s pretend the cool factor of having a wicked animal
captive on your grounds outweighed the ethical issues and the danger of being
letterbombed by PETA militants. Shouldn’t be a huge stretch eh?
#5. Cobra Command:
These guys aren’t loveable, teachable or safe, but when it comes to being badass,
there’s not much better you can do than keeping a Cobra on your premises. They’re
only legal in some states, so you’re probably going to have to resort to the plethora
of black market options to lock one down, but then, there you go, an animal that’s
number one goal is to poison everything it sees. In India they keep them in wicker
baskets, in North America you keep them behind half a foot of plexi-glass and feed
them very carefully.
#4. Big Pussy:
Keeping a big cat is a pretty classic move for a gentleman of leisure, and it’s
estimated that in the US there are more tigers living in captivity than there are wild
in the Asian continent. Chew on that for a minute, because it’s likely somebody in
your City owns a Lion or a Tiger and is keeping it on the sly. They’re expensive to
keep, requiring space to roam so as not to go completely crazy, and about 15 pounds
of raw mean a day (or roughly 1.6 informants a week). You can get these legally if
you have the space, but black market trade is alive and well if you know a guy who
knows a guy. They’re super cute when they’re little, but Big Cats have been hunting
Homo sapiens since before we jumped out of the trees, and old habits die real hard.
#3. Death From Above:
They fly, the kill, and they come back home. For everybody there with an aviary
they aren’t using, Birds of Prey make crazy pets you can actually train and work
with. From owls to eagles to osprey to vultures, if it has wings, you can probably
keep it. It’ll take a few years to learn the trade and just as long to train your pet(s),
but nobody is ever going to question your place in line if you’ve got a raptor on your
arm ready to do your arguing for you.
#2 Here Fishy Fishy Fishy:
Once relegated to Bond villains and mad scientists, you can get piranha pretty
much anywhere they sell exotic fish in as great as supply as your heart’s desire, in
captivity they can grow pretty big (2 feet across), so you need a serious aquarium
if you’re going to keep more than a handful, and lets face it, it’s not a feeding
frenzy with anything less than a dozen. After that, feeding them is as badass as it
sounds. You throw meat, in processed or kitten varieties, into the drink and watch
the fireworks. If you’re into the extremely vicious, the Serasalmus piranha will
slaughter anything that it can get it’s jaws on, your hand in particular, so it has to be
kept by its lonesome in solitary.
#1. Me and My Monkey:
The only way you’re skirting the laws and grabbing a chimpanzee is if you’re
offering the little guy refuge from an abusive captive situation, and even after that
you’re going to have to jump through some major hurdles, but not major enough
that you can’t buy your way over them. So, now you have a chimp, you can dress
him, make/let him smoke cigars, and teach him all kinds of sign language. Oh,
and you can have a trained killer bodyguard too. Did you know that even though
humans and Chimpanzee’s share 99% of the same DNA, a full grown chimp is about
5 times stronger than a person, pound for pound, and they figure by the time it’s
five, old Bubbles could straight up murder a full grown man. All that said, they make
wonderful butlers.
Written by: Jeremy P Beal
