When I was a kid I had an alligator. Unfortunately, even indoors he didn't make it through the Illinois winter.
More than forty years later, one of my grade school classmates contacted me through facebook and asked of all things "do you still have that alligator?"
That strange South African lizard that looks like it's wearing spiky armor. Saw it at a Harry Potter convention - the girl who owned him named him Trogdor because he did look like a baby dragon that hadn't grown its wings yet.