Adoring The Pests
Animals that would otherwise be considered pests are welcomed and/or sought out.

(permanent link) added: 2012-02-18 15:16:58 sponsor: HiddenFacedMatt (last reply: 2013-04-27 09:15:11)

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Marge: There's a family of possums in here!
Homer: I call the big one Bitey.

Not content with petting domestic animals at home, or even some wild animals in the woods, some go so far as to welcome rather harmful wild animals into their homes and workplaces.

Sometimes this is simply out of sheer ignorance as to how dangerous and/or unhealthy this is, others may be fully aware of it and just see it as Worth It.

This does not include cases where specific creatures that happen to be from species associated with pest status actually have practical roles.

Compare/contrast with Friend to Bugs; not to be conflated with it, though, as one can adore "cute" pests such as mice and squirrels, while still hating bugs, or conversely, adore the least pestilential of bugs while not letting the cute pests' cuteness cause them to be Karma Houdinis.

Truth in Television, of course, but it might be an idea to avoid singling out specific real-life people for this.


  • The Simpsons has Homer not seeing anything wrong with possums infesting a train and crawling around on a fire extinguisher.
  • Ratatouille has Linguini befriending a rat named Remy and letting him into the kitchen, and later letting Remy's rat friends in as well. (This results in the closure of the restaurant once the health inspector finds out that Linguini had been letting rats touch the food.)
  • The Green Mile features Mr. Jingles / Steamboat Willy, a mouse found running around the death row cells. They decide not to kill him, aside from the Jerk Ass Percy, because of his unusual behavior: fearless in the face of humans, accepts food only from the regular guards, and his searching of the cells as if he's awaiting for somebody. Mr. Jingles adopts Eduard Delacroix when he arrives and entertains all with his spool fetching trick, even performing a show for the guards on another block.
  • On NewsRadio, the gang befriends a rat that is roaming the station. Dave doesn't know about this and sets traps for it, which the others set off to keep the rat safe.
  • In Elf, Buddy tries to befriend a vicious raccoon, which attacks him for his troubles.
  • Lazlo from Camp Lazlo gets a leech/sea lamprey attached to his head. Despite draining him dry, Lazlo insists that it's friendly.
  • In Oblivion, one of the first Fighter's Guild quests send you to help out a woman who has a 'rat problem' in her basement. Turns out she actually likes having the rats down there, and needs you to kill the mountain lions that keep killing them.
  • In Buffy when Amy turns herself into a rat to escape burning at the stake, four seasons or something ridiculous like that are spent by (mainly) Willow looking after her and trying to find a cure.
    • Oz was also a werewolf.
  • Gaston Lagaffe keeps an entire family of mice in the workplace's "important documents and contracts" filing cabinet (or rather, he didn't have the heart to remove them once he saw the newly-born litter nesting in the shredded papers). Of course, he's blind to their faults, given that he also keeps a goldfish, a seagull, a cat, turtles and other animals around, to his coworkers' chagrin.
  • Dr House once kept a rat he'd found in a patient's house (it gave him the Eureka Moment necessary to the case), calling it Steve McQueen.
  • In the Transfomers Prime episode "Scrapheap", Raf finds a small, adorable robotic creature the size of a kitten, called a scraplet, and assumes it is the Autobots' pet. It turns out scraplets eat metal, especially living metal, like, say, the Autobots.
  • Soap: When Chester is being held captive in his own basement by a fellow prison escapee, he befriends a rat and calls it Harold. He "teaches" it to scurry away when the lights go on.
  • A borderline example comes from Harry Potter; The Weasley family adopts a rat named Scabbers, who they thought was a wild rat at the time. (Turns out it was really a shapeshifted form of Peter Pettigrew.)
  • Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress might have rats, cockroaches, or flies as their favourite animal.
  • Chinese culture considers crickets to be good luck, while most other societies are at best indifferent to them.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode, Fluttershy finds a cute Parasprite, feeds it, and brings it home. On the way, it multiplies. The Parasprites keep multiplying until they eat most of Ponyville.
  • Goosebumps:
    • In "Monster Blood IV", Andy thinks the blue Monster Blood creature is cute and pets it. The creature ends up multiplying when it drinks water and soon the town is overrun with blue Monster Blood creature.
    • Subverted in "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp." Grady adopts are stray dog and names it Wolf. After some strange howls and disasters in the swamp, he wonders if Wolf is a werewolf. He isn't.
  • In The Haunting Hour: The Series episode "Best Friends Forever", Jack adopts a zombie as a pet.
  • Enchanted is all over this trope--Giselle calls the "forest creatures" of New York (cockroaches, pigeons and rats) to help her clean up Robert's apartment. Hilarity Ensues when he walks in with the creatures still in the place.
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