Nerd’s Best Friend: Hero Pets I Would Kill to Have

I need a pet. I need a pet like I need 17 sequels to Fast & Furious, or how I tuck the blankets under me to make a human burrito when I go to sleep — I can live without it, but my quality of life is 73% better with it. But you know what makes it harder? Being a nerd who loves pets. Nerd standards are fundamentally flawed, including what we dream in an animal sidekick, and our best hope is having a pet quirky enough to match our imaginations. Here are ten pets in the nerd game that your dog or cat doesn’t know they’re being compared to. Thanks to them, the sidekick bar is unreasonably high and had you price-checking ferrets to name Pabu, and knowing at least one person who has a 16 year old Corgi because in 1999 it looked like Vulpix. Ampersand (Y: The Last Man) The capuchin game had been dead till Ampersand took that baton and leapt into a tree with it, wearing a diaper and flinging poo at anyone who tried stopping his reign from 2002 to 2008. Amp was the one of only two male organisms alive on earth, and often the smartest one based on Yorick’s poor decision-making skills. How many cats you know that saved human civilization by throwing life-saving genetically evolved poop? You haven’t loved a monkey like this since Monkey Trouble in 1994. I was 9 years old when I looked up a pet store in the phone book only to call and learn I’m $2,000 short of my dream pet, yet here I am two decades later making the same dumb call thanks to a monkey with the coolest name ever. Ampersa…