Spotsylvania County, VA Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

Article VI of Chapter 4, Wild or Exotic Animals, flatly prohibits keeping or permitting to be kept any wild or exotic animal as a pet under Sec. 4-81. A separate section, Sec. 4-80, bars keeping such animals for display or exhibition on private premises, gratuitously or for a fee, though it carves out properly licensed zoological parks, performing animal exhibitions, circuses, and veterinary clinics, and even those licensed exhibitors cannot let anyone but a trained handler physically touch the animals. Anyone offering a wild or exotic animal for sale must conspicuously post a notice at the point of sale naming the county's ban and listing examples: monkeys, raccoons, skunks, wolves, squirrels, foxes, leopards, panthers, tigers, lions, lynx, other warm-blooded wild animals, poisonous snakes, tarantulas, and any member of the crocodilian family including alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gavials.

When the article was first adopted, anyone already keeping a wild or exotic animal had to register it with the animal control officer within 60 days and dispose of it, by removing it from the county, giving or selling it to a zoological park, or surrendering it to animal control, within five years of adoption. The animal control officer enforces the article and may release a surrendered animal to the wild, to a zoological park, to a responsible adult, or euthanize it if warranted.