Goats are LOUSY pets....I'm with you on the chickens.
Ferrets are cute as Hell, but about as smart as our goldfish. They also steal things and hide them all over the house.
Horses are too high-maintenance and none too bright.
Fish are relaxing, but so is yoga and you don't have to deal with algae.
We had a green anole once - booooring. Also fragile and high maintenance and they eat crickets. Our house sounded like a campground for 5 months after the lizard died from all the escaped crickets.
The garter snake was cool - had a bit of personality, low maintenance, relatively sturdy and ate goldfish. Goldfish are much quieter than crickets, and they don't escape. When they do, they don't get very far. Snakes aren't much for walk-taking, though.
Kids make good pets - some can be trained to do tricks. They're hard to housebreak, though, and if you chain them to a tree in the back yard, someone always calls CPS.
I'm going to cast my vote for either a dog (non shedding would be wonderful) or a pet rock.