The Elephant in the Living Room is a documentary that explains a hidden subculture of people who own exotic animals as pets. Everyone has seen the person who has a python or some weird animal as a pet, but this movie goes beyond that. A man living in Ohio received a male and female lion cubs to help him out of a depression. The man was not rich, he did not have any special zoology degrees or training, he just wanted to have a lion. They were kept in his yard in an enclosure. At one point there was a woman on the highway that called 911 saying there was a lion loose. The operator at first thought she was lying. The full grown male African lion that the man had in his back yard got loose (go figure). The story focuses on a public safety officer who saw early on that exotic animal ownership was on the rise in Ohio where there was no legislation banning such thing. There are many stories that are told about non native animals being kept as pets and escape or are released. From cougars, tigers, venomous snakes, monkeys, alligators, the public safety officer does his best to educate, capture and secure the wild beast. He states how in his part of Ohio there are more nuisance gator calls than in Florida. The documentary states that there are more Bengal Tigers in captivity in Texas than in the wild in their native India.
I found this topic extremely interesting. The Animal Planet shows about Wild Hogs and Pythons do not put into perspective how and where the animals came from and how the species that were alien to this continent now invade and flourish in a non native 
habitat and could have been completely avoidable. The expos and flea markets that pop up in the middle of nowhere that sell these animals attract a large crowd. This documentary is sponsored by the Humane Society in order to raise awareness of an increasing problem.
What are you watching?
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