Pottstown, PA Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

Section 202, Prohibited Animals, sits in Chapter 2, Part 2, Keeping of Certain Animals, immediately after the farm-animal ban in Section 201. It bans keeping any wild animal in the Borough of Pottstown regardless of how it was obtained, whether purchased from a pet store or a pet export show, caught from the wilderness or outside, or acquired in any other fashion. The section lists prohibited wild animals by name, including migratory birds, fox, bear, deer, monkeys, raccoons, opossums, skunks, venomous snakes, venomous spiders, alligators and crocodiles, and states that list is illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Because the ban turns on the animal being wild rather than on a dangerous-animal declaration, it applies even to an exotic pet that has never bitten or threatened anyone, unlike the behavior-based dangerous and vicious animal provisions in Chapter 2, Part 1, Section 108, which confine animals that have already attacked. An editor's note to Ordinance 2057 (January 12, 2009) records that the Borough Manager, working with the Police Department and Code Enforcement Office, may set reasonable rules for enforcing and permitting animals under this Part, but the text of Section 202 itself contains no permit path around the prohibition.