Despite my protestations in our early family life, the NWC family has had a rash of interesting pet choices in the last few years. It started with the standard dog, but for whatever reason she wasn't enough. My kids got tired of mammals and crossed chordata. It's been interesting, to say the least.
Anyways, it got me thinking about pet choices, and why families pick the pets they do. Here's ours, along with scouting reports:
Reptiles:
Bearded dragon: possibly the hardiest of the bunch, save the dog. My son joined a 4H reptile club, and this was recommended to him as one of the easiest reptiles to own. And he has been. He gets almost all of his water from his food, can survive days when turning on the heat lamp has been forgotten, and doesn't mind much missing a day or two of food. In all, he just wants to sit on his log and sun the day away. I'm glad we started with this pet, since it has taught my son some responsibility. But no one ever showed us the fine print. 10+ years life expectancy! He'll probably be alive when my son leaves for college
Corn snakes: 3 to be exact. The first was an unfortunate victim of well-intentioned 'desegregation'. My son thought it would be a great idea to introduce his new baby snake to the bearded dragon. Why not? They're both reptiles, right? It wasn't even a fight. Three chomps later, the snake was dead and my son lost some innocence. Now for the wiser, he was 2 newer snakes that live happily together, going on almost 3 years now. These are perhaps the lowest maintenance of the crowd. Provide heat, and feed once a week. It takes a bit getting used to frozen mice in the freezer, and it's macabre watching food preparation (stab wounds in the head to optimize the smell for the snakes. Yum!). They too might live in our house longer than our son, but they are really fascinating animals. I would recommend snakes over lizards.
Amphibians:
Lame. My youngest daughter wanted to get in on the non-mammalian action, and for whatever reason latched onto pacman frogs. She would not be dissuaded. The first one died two weeks after it's arrival, when we went for a weekend trip and left the heating pad on. We came home to leather. We felt bad and decided to follow one bad decision with another, and agreed to get her another one. This one was fed-exed to us and lasted a little longer, about a couple of months. Not sure why that one expired. I would dissuade anyone getting these frogs. They are interesting to look at and relatively easy to take care of. But they do absolutely nothing.
Other mammals:
Perhaps the most interesting has been our recent hedgehog acquisition. I'm a little concerned about my eldest daughter's ability to take care of it when she gets back to college, but it's been fun so far. It's really a neat animal. Somewhat expensive (~$200) and short life span (~4 years), it has endeared itself to the rest of the family and neighborhood kids. It's basically a guinea pig that requires a little more TLC and seems more sociable.
So there you go. I would have never thought our house would have turned into a zoo, but here we are. Anyways, I'm curious. What are everyone's interesting pets? Would you recommend them?
Anyways, it got me thinking about pet choices, and why families pick the pets they do. Here's ours, along with scouting reports:
Reptiles:
Bearded dragon: possibly the hardiest of the bunch, save the dog. My son joined a 4H reptile club, and this was recommended to him as one of the easiest reptiles to own. And he has been. He gets almost all of his water from his food, can survive days when turning on the heat lamp has been forgotten, and doesn't mind much missing a day or two of food. In all, he just wants to sit on his log and sun the day away. I'm glad we started with this pet, since it has taught my son some responsibility. But no one ever showed us the fine print. 10+ years life expectancy! He'll probably be alive when my son leaves for college
Corn snakes: 3 to be exact. The first was an unfortunate victim of well-intentioned 'desegregation'. My son thought it would be a great idea to introduce his new baby snake to the bearded dragon. Why not? They're both reptiles, right? It wasn't even a fight. Three chomps later, the snake was dead and my son lost some innocence. Now for the wiser, he was 2 newer snakes that live happily together, going on almost 3 years now. These are perhaps the lowest maintenance of the crowd. Provide heat, and feed once a week. It takes a bit getting used to frozen mice in the freezer, and it's macabre watching food preparation (stab wounds in the head to optimize the smell for the snakes. Yum!). They too might live in our house longer than our son, but they are really fascinating animals. I would recommend snakes over lizards.
Amphibians:
Lame. My youngest daughter wanted to get in on the non-mammalian action, and for whatever reason latched onto pacman frogs. She would not be dissuaded. The first one died two weeks after it's arrival, when we went for a weekend trip and left the heating pad on. We came home to leather. We felt bad and decided to follow one bad decision with another, and agreed to get her another one. This one was fed-exed to us and lasted a little longer, about a couple of months. Not sure why that one expired. I would dissuade anyone getting these frogs. They are interesting to look at and relatively easy to take care of. But they do absolutely nothing.
Other mammals:
Perhaps the most interesting has been our recent hedgehog acquisition. I'm a little concerned about my eldest daughter's ability to take care of it when she gets back to college, but it's been fun so far. It's really a neat animal. Somewhat expensive (~$200) and short life span (~4 years), it has endeared itself to the rest of the family and neighborhood kids. It's basically a guinea pig that requires a little more TLC and seems more sociable.
So there you go. I would have never thought our house would have turned into a zoo, but here we are. Anyways, I'm curious. What are everyone's interesting pets? Would you recommend them?
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