7 reasons giraffes would make suitable, indeed excellent, pets

1. Herbivores. Before I gush on about anything else, I must first put the issue of risk to rest. Despite being a wild animal, this plant loving, tree hugging creature is not going to be gobbling up you or your neighbours anytime soon. They only like green things. Typically, leaves.

NB: Do not think that this means you can go around sticking your arm or head in its mouth or start doing a smart “Haha, I’m mocking you” dance in front of its face. This will result in defensive eating, the giraffic equivalent to humans eating their emotions.

2. Height. Giraffes are like bouncers, only cooler. Provided you have a fence, store your giraffe in your front yard. Its incredible height will serve as a deterrent to all peeping toms and thieving thieves. If you wish to reap the benefits of this becoming a humorous situation, ensure that your fence is quite tall, so that only your giraffe’s ears or head can be seen. This will mean the peeping tom and thieving thieve will enter the yard before realising you are the proud owner of a bonafide giraffe and promptly pooping their pants. Further, owning a giraffe will allow you to make more use of your roof. It’s silly not being able to access your whole house, because when on the roof you can do things like sky watching, possum chasing and eaves cleaning. Lots of fun. Just make sure you wear a harness or employ the use of an ockey strap. Safety first, kids.

3. Today Tonight. Owning a pet giraffe will entitle you to fame and glory. Write Today Tonight an email detailing your story and how you and your giraffe have a bond to rival any man and his dog. Attach photos. I suggest one of you with your arms wrapped lovingly around your giraffe’s neck. Another of the giraffe wearing a bonnet as you both stretch your necks towards the apples in the apple tree. One of you sharing a bowl of pink ice-cream. Yes! A playful ice-cream fight would be cute. Tiny drops of melting pink on Girrafey’s eyelashes, an upturned cone on your head, both of you giggling, looking guilty, abashed, like you’ve just been caught making out. If you don’t like Today Tonight try Current Affair. And if you are sophisticated enough, you might even get a look-in on 60 Minutes.

4. Blue tongue. As a general rule, mothers do not like their offspring to bring home snakes, lizards or crocodiles as pets. This is unfortunate, because reptiles are generally considered to be pretty cool (read: Bindi Irwin). So, by keeping a giraffe as a pet, you are pretty much keeping a reptile as a pet, specifically a blue-tongue lizard. Really, you should thank your lucky stars, because it will be easier to wrestle a giraffe than a crocodile.

Just thinking again about photo opportunities: You could suck on a few blue Warheads, thus gaining a blue tongue for your own mouth, and then take photos of you and Giraffey together. Wear ‘Same. Same. But different.’ shirts.

5. Eyelashes. This may not be the best reason if you have a particular hang-up about your eyes and their lashes, but if you have a pet giraffe, you can marvel at its pretty eyes all day long, especially when it is raining or when the morning dew has just fallen. You think this is a weak reason? I think not. People buy puppies because they are cute and cuddly, kittens because they are tiny and sweet, and guinea pigs because they are short and stumpy jokes. Giraffes are tall, lean and have beautiful, long eyelashes. They are practically supermodels. Which is a very good reason.

6. Naming rights. As the proprietor of mister or missis giraffe, you are entitled to name mister or missis giraffe. Personally, I like Giraffey. Although it sounds unoriginal, it’s really not. Why? Because giraffes don’t give each other names in the wild and no one has ever had a pet giraffe before*. Essentially then, you can call your giraffe anything you want and it will be the first mister or missis giraffe of that name. Except Giraffey. Because that’s my giraffe’s name. And if you take that name my Giraffey is going to leap over my tall front fence and is going to eat you and your lame fake Giraffey.

7. All of the above. Plus exclamation marks after each point. For emphasis and height.

*Not that I’m aware of. But this list didn’t initially seem like the type of list to require research, so I did none.