Mount Vernon, NY Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

City of Mount Vernon Code § 116-8 flatly prohibits any person from keeping an animal of a species that is wild, ferocious, fierce, dangerous or naturally inclined to do harm, anywhere in the City except at a laboratory operated under § 504 of the state Public Health Law, at a commercial animal dealer's establishment with protective devices adequate to stop the animals from escaping or hurting the public, or at a circus that is licensed under Chapter 240, Article I of the City Code and that furnishes the Commissioner of Public Safety with satisfactory evidence of trained personnel and adequate containment.

There is no path for a private resident to keep a wild or dangerous exotic species as a household pet under this section: private ownership simply is not one of the listed exceptions. Section 116-9 goes further for one category regardless of setting, providing that a venomous snake shall not be sold to, given to or kept by any person, with no carve-out for laboratories, dealers or circuses in that sentence. Both sections sit in Article II, Wild Animals, adopted in 1970 as Chapter 16-A of the General Ordinances and carried forward unchanged in substance into the current code.

Because Article II contains no penalty section of its own, an offense falls back on the citywide default penalty in § 1-4 of Chapter 1, which applies whenever the Code does not otherwise specify a fine for a violation.