“Do I hear eight-thousand-eight-thousand-eight-thousand? Do I hear nine-thousand-nine-thousand-nine-thousand?” The auctioneer’s tenor echoed through the huge, cold room, the smell of feces and grease thick in the air. A gasp rippled through the two-hundred-strong crowd as we saw what stood in the ring: two Grant’s zebras, hostile and nervous.

I drew back slowly from the green steel bars, the only things separating me from the prancing animals. I was not used to seeing zebras, native only to Africa, two metres in front of me. Although they resemble horses, zebras are surprisingly vicious when kept in captivity, making them nearly impossible to tame. But now the MC rubbed the male’s side, showing the audience how “domestic” the pair was. The crowd emitted the requisite aw.

Some attendees looked on, thrilled. Others made sure their children were seated firmly on the ground, far from the bars. It was hard to tell who was buying and who was just curious, who was an activist or a journalist. I was at an animal auction, one of two held by Tiger Paw Exotics each year, and the crowd was a curious mix of trucker hats, NASCAR jackets, mullets, bleach-blonde hair, knitting needles and quilts. Most attendees were tough-looking farmers. There was also a grey-haired man in a clean black suit, accompanied by his trim wife and young son—possibly the owners of the silver BMW parked outside. Black-clad Mennonite families lined the top benches at the back of the room. They were presumably here to buy sheep or goats, not zebras or exotic birds or golden Mongolian horses, which looked like Shetland ponies but stomped their hooves aggressively. Serious buyers flicked their auction cards, which had numbers drawn on in magic marker. The auctioneer and MC watched for the lightning-quick flashes of upheld pink.

These so-called Odd and Unusual Sales have run for the past ten years at the Ontario Livestock Exchange in St. Jacobs. (Tiger Paw also runs a petting zoo in Ar...