Yes, she wants a terrapin after seeing them in the pet department of a garden centre.
"Aw they're so cute" etc. The only way I could discourage her was by telling her that they eat live worms.

I used to work in a petshop and as far I knew then, most species of terrapin were banned under the CITES thing. I used to look after the reptiles and fish and a reptile keeper told me that the move to outlaw terrapins came in the wake the Ninja Turtles film, when idiot parents bought ran out to buy them but kept them in the same set up as a goldfish. Where they promptly died. And parental human nature being what it is they more than likely replaced dead terrapins with the same zeal as dead goldfish. In my petshop career, the covert replacing of dead goldfish was nearly a daily routine where dopey parents would bring in the dead fish and ask you to match it.
"He died during the night, if you can find one that looks the same nobody'll know"

I think that all pets, exotic or otherwise should have a licensing system. There were several occaisions where paint-by-numbers hardmen would demand a snake or lizard and I'd know and
he'd probably know that the poor herp (thats a nerdy reptile keeper phrase) would languish in an ill equiped tank, be neglected and otherwise abused till it died or he got bored with it. But anyhoo, if I could see outright that all he wanted it was for to show his mates it eating a mouse I'd do my best to dissuade him with:

1) "It'll cost yeh bud" and quote him a ridiculous price
2) Tell him to buy a book first and then decide, although to these lads buying and reading a book would probably generate the same sense of wonder from his mates
3) Deliberatley provoke the animal and get it to bite me. I've been bit by every commercially available snake and lizard except a Tokay and a Tegu (look them up)

But many times they'd still buy one and it'd depress the shit out of me. I've since grown out of the idea of keeping a miserable lizard in a tank for my own gratification. I love them but if I was honest with myself I'd have to admit that I've neglected the ones in my care. I think my stint in the petshop and the condition of most reptiles that I've seen in houses has killed all hope of me getting another one. Quinner had a Savannah monitor that he kept in squalor, fed it on crap
in a small tank relative to animals size and it died. Few years later he gets another one and same again, the animal was living in a tank with month old shites the same size as it. I was the same with some of my lizards, although I loved them, out of sheer laziness I wouldn't clean their tanks or even change their water. At the start when I was 13-14, a large part of the reason for getting a lizard was definitely just to be weird or just to be able to add to a conversation "yeah my lizard ate 2 mice there last week.." "A lizard?!! You keep lizards?!! Oh you're so cool and attractively mysterious, can i suck you off?"

A certain element of my attraction in keeping a strange creature inside a box on a shelf is carried over into my Mr Amperduke and Fugue comics. I just think the whole thing is fucked up. Keeping animals for pleasure, amusement or some status symbol is wrong. So Hayley won't be getting a terrapin on my watch.

Heh, imagine if there were required licenses for all pets. You'd have to queue up in some office, gather up forms and i.d. etc sign this and that before get your license for your garter snake but you'd still be able to knock some slut up and create another bastard child for the world.

Cut to Louise Woodward standing in the maternity ward, dead baby in a pillow case;
"He died during the night, if you can find one that looks the same ...."