Cobras, cats, magic mushrooms, and foul-mouthed crows: how Nicolas Cage became Hollywood’s eccentric animal whisperer
There are many ways in which Nicolas Cage lives up to his billing as one of Hollywood’s foremost eccentrics, and his relationship with the animal kingdom is right up there at the top.
Ever since he ate a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss, which he shockingly didn’t enjoy very much, the Academy Award winner and reformed straight-to-video journeyman has taken it upon himself to ensure that each one of his subsequent encounters with wildlife becomes stranger than the last.
Lots of people keep snakes, but only Nicolas Cage kept two king cobras, which would try to hypnotise and kill him in one fell swoop, with the actor sharing how they would attempt to place him under hypnosis “by showing me their backs, and then they’d lunge at me.” Needless to say, they eventually found a new home.
He also kept a pet crow named Huginn, after one of the two ravens who brought information from the mortal realm of Midgard to Odin, and who he revealed had “taken to calling me names” by calling him an “ass” anytime he left a room they were both in, with the crow also convincing the star that he was definitely a goth, obviously.
None of this should come as a surprise when this is the same guy who spent $150,000 on an octopus in the 1980s, which he named Cool, operating under the assumption that the cephalopod would somehow make him a better actor. He did break out in a big way in the ’90s, so maybe he was on to something after all.
All of this pales in comparison to the time he took magic mushrooms with his cat, as one does. The feline developed an intense desire to snaffle the hallucinogenic he kept in the fridge at home, and after deciding that if you can’t beat them, maybe you should join them, Cage and his four-legged companion spent a night out of their fucking minds on shrooms.
“It was a peaceful and beautiful experience,” he fondly recollected. “But I threw them out.” Getting high on magic mushrooms with your cat? Fine, why the hell not. Getting high on magic mushrooms with your cat more than once? Absolutely out of the question, according to the household rules of Nicolas Cage.
Even dead animals are fair game for the actor, who spent over a quarter of a million dollars on a dinosaur skull, outbidding Leonardo DiCaprio in the process, only to be informed by the authorities that it was, in fact, a stolen dinosaur skull that needed to be returned to its rightful home in Mongolia.
Of course Nicolas Cage can’t just own a pet and call it a day; shit has to get weird. Maybe he should just get a goldfish or something, but that’s never really been his style, and nobody would be surprised in the slightest if he ended up purchasing a Komodo dragon that can read his mind.
