Should the law restrict what animals can be kept as pets?

I grew up in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, being sixty-three, I was a child at a time before governments and organizations had stepped in to determine what could or could not be a pet.

We had a fox for a couple of years, raising it from a pup. Now, no one went out and decided to adopt a fox as a pet. As I understand it, the mother had been killed in someone's trap and my father ended up with one of the pups.

Except for the first couple of weeks, when everyone was concentrating on getting it to eat, it was free to leave at any time, and eventually did. As a pup, however, it was quite friendly. It would run out to greet me when I came home from school, leaping into the air and into my arms.

Mom didn't allow any animals in the house, but the fox would sneak in sometimes when someone opened the door, and there would be a chase, as the fox ran from room to room.

We had a couple of dogs, and she got along okay with both of them, although she was a bit too exuberant for the older one. She ignored the chickens and cats. The cats, wisely, avoided her but the chickens didn't seem to consider that she might be a threat.

As she got older, she began wandering at night. As a kid, I'd worry about her, but dad would assure us that it was supposed to be that way. In time, she began staying away for days at a time, then returning to rest up for a couple of days. Eventually, she didn't come back. About a year after we had last seen her around the house, we pulled into the drive way one night to see a fox running from the dog food bowl, so we figured she had probably been visiting from time to time for a free meal. Otherwise, she had gone wild.

A had a couple of raccoons at different times, too. Similarly, they were beautiful pets while they were young, friendly and playful. They were very much like cats, as far as that goes; although, because they could not retract their claws, there would sometimes be some unintended bloodshed. It didn't help that they were talkers, and when they were talking to me, they wanted to look me in the face, and would climb on up even if I was wearing short pants. Like the fox, as they grew into adulthood, they gradually reverted to the wild.

Another time, we raised a skunk. The skunk was not descented, yet never sprayed around the house even when the dogs barked at her. She was not friendly in the way that the fox and raccoons were friendly, but she would tolerate being held or petted, although I always got the feeling that she'd rather not.

She had her first litter of kittens in a hole that she had dug in our backyard, and pretty much remained around the yard, field, and barns, even as an adult, although she quit coming up to anyone.