Most of my guys are rescues or adoptions, so here's the scoop on those who are (fish not included; almost all of my fish were rescues or adoptions, but it'd take forever to post them all here) :
Aish-Tamid is a vietnamese rainbow millipede. He was abandoned by his former owner at Petco. This is among the hardest of millipede species to keep alive in captivity, so when I saw him out on their adoption table with a "free to good home" sign, I had to take him; I just knew that with his pretty colors, someone less invertebrate-savvy would take him and he'd be dead in weeks. There are very few successful keepers of this species, and fewer breeder still, but a breeder has been advising me on care and so far, so good!
Alejandro was from a batch of chicks my neighbors gave their kids as easter gifts. These people are absolute jerks and never supervise the kids, so a total of 13 chicks were killed by the rough-housing kids - despite calls to the SPCA! We adopted Alejandro early on, and the last survivor - her sister - was uh... "removed" after we found her wandering our yard, thin and anemic, in the middle of the water.
She (the sibling) now lives at an animal sanctuary and is finally properly cared for.
Widget (top) and Auhlae (bottom) are a mother-daughter pair rescued from the live feed room at the zoo I worked at. Widget was having horrible seizures and was being picked on by the other gerbils, so I brought her home for a quieter death. Lo and behold, the seizures were from a hormonal imbalanced caused by her pregnancy! She had three sweet babies not long after coming home. The males were placed in a sanctuary, and the female (Auhlae) lives with her mom now.
Brindam belonged to an animal hoarder who had a huge overpopulation of rabbits in her barn. Brinny was being kept in a small cage with her littermate, and both came down with severe eye infections. I was photographing conditions in the barn for an SPCA investigation, and saw the two bunnies but didn't want to bring them home since my parents would be mad. But when I came back a week later since the animal cops still hadn't taken action, Brindam's sibling was dead and her eye was so infected that our vet told us we should have it removed. I elected to treat instead and did manage to save the eye, though she is mostly blind in it.
Charlie and an iguana that we fostered and later placed were abandoned in an apartment without food or water when their owners moved. As a result, Charlie was very emaciated and developed bleeding intestinal ulcers. The shelter we were volunteering with at the time didn't take exotics, so we took both, but couldn't really justify placing Charlie since he had so many high-cost medical problems and special care needs.
I found Corvus in a badly busted critter keeper in a shopping car in Petco's parking lot. I suppose she was abandoned there and they expected someone would take her, though I'm baffled as to why they didn't just bring her in the store to the adoption table. At any rate - glad I found her! She is an absolute LOVE.
Jesus is a 14+ y.o. zebratail finch that I hand reared when his parents died during a power outage. He had rickets and an upper respritory infection but somehow pulled through. He has also outlived all of his flockmates by five years (unfortunately, my parents did not allow me to find companions for him after his flock died out).
I found Leo as a feral kitten while documenting conditions at a livestock auction. He had somehow gotten trapped in the steer weighing pen and couldn't get out. Panicked, skinny, covered in calf diarhea, and sick, he was in true risk of being trampled as the steers were led in and out for auction, so I snuck in and grabbed him inbetween steers. He was supposed to go to a shelter but turned out to be FIP+ so we elected to just keep him.
Leucos was adopted from the Port Jevis Humane Society along with a second mouse, Moreau, who has since passed on due to an aggressive reproductive cancer. Neither were hand tame and Moreau allready had cancer so the shelter was having a heck of a time placing them.
Nuru was abandoned with his hens in the woods in the middle of January! Needless to say, all his girls died of frostbite or were eaten by Coyotes. My uncle, who works for the DEC, caught Nuru and brought him to us. Unfortunately, he has proven VERY aggressive so we are having a spot of trouble with him and are not 100% sure if he'll just be a foster or a permenant part of the household (we've only had him since February).
Pretty Bird was abandoned by a worker at my Vet Office at three years old because she bit a child badly. Unfortunately, no one in the office was bird-savvy, so the poor thing was stuck in a TINY cage with no toys, a lousy diet, and a stressful environment in the kennel area! When I started working there I was taken by her horrible living conditions and started working with her (no one ever handled her because she was so aggressive, but you would be too if you had to live like that!). She developed a liking to me, so her former owner surprised me Christmas morning by setting her up in the break room with a big bow on the cage that said, "If you want me, I'm all yours!"
Wendy is a female rabbit who was most likely set loose by her former owner in February (no one is looking for her, so abandonment is very likely). She was spotted running loose for about a week by a caring couple who were eventually able to capture her. She had large teats upon capture, suggesting she either recently had a litter or even worse - was abandoned with a litter that didn't make it in the sub-zero temps she was released in =(
Rosalinda is a female Chilean Rosehair Tarantula who was brought to the zoo I volunteered at with five others who had been badly neglected in a pet store. They were all mite-infested, emaciated, and dehydrated; two died from the state they were in. The zoo could only keep one, so I adopted "Rosie." (As you can see, Rosie no longer has to worry about being hungry!)
I adopted Sigma (top) and Theto (bottom) from an old lady with parkinson's disease who could not longer care for the birds properly. They weren't really ever cared for "properly" though; they were living in an extremely tiny cage with no perch, just a single wire running the length of the cage, and no toys. They were fed a diet of only spray millet, which is likely why Theto has fatty liver disease (hence his big "chest").
Tintagel is a golden apple snail. She came into a store that does not carry snails with a shipment of goldfish, and was being rolled about and nipped by the goldies (you can see a chip in her shell from this as well). They gave her to me for free since she was just going to be eaten.
Velveeta is a 13 year old female budgie who was taken at
great discount from a shoddy pet store with her deceased mate Sky as both were suffering from URIs the store refused to treat. Funny what threats to call the authorities can get you...
Shiva the snake slayer! This girl was supposed to be corn snake food, but because the poor snake's moron owner didn't stun or cull her first, she mauled the snake. The guy was pissed and put a posting on craigslist saying she'd be released at the day's end if no one claimed her (what an ass). Seeing as it was about 2 degrees out, I couldn't say no!
Ok, that's it! Only my dog (bought by parents), conure (gift from grandparents - grrr!), hissing cockroaches (bred by me), other two snails (pet store - I know, bad me), and giant african millipedes (bought from a breeder) were not rescued or adopted.
), convinced her not to eat the cats, and somehow through that she ended up stealing my heart and I couldn't adopt her out, little bugger (she's still annoying as ever, but charming in the next moment). 
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