First Pets: Wild Thing
Written By Jane Hammerslough
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Don't Bite My Head Off
Okay, so it wasn't exactly an animal, but my boys were suffciently interested in the Venus Flytrap I brought home to name it Ramona. I suspect it was the carnivorous aspect of the plant that caught their attention. As promised, Ramona snapped up the bits of raw hamburger and chicken we offered her hairy leaves. If Ramona had come with an instruction manual, however, it would have said, "Never feed me anything but soft-bodied insects, like flies." Apparently little leaf tummies can't tolerate fat. I learned this six days later, when Ramona died.
Our next pet came with instructions — plus a water purifier, food, and "instant" eggs. As a kid I'd desperately wanted the sea monkeys I'd seen in ads in comic books, which depicted them as cute, sea horse-like humans. In reality, they looked and smelled like, well, teeny-tiny shrimp. "Those just aren't real pets," Phin said resentfully, then ignored them for the rest of their lives. Which turned out to be 13 days.
Undaunted, I purchased some triops, a kind of larger, ancient sea monkey with one intriguing feature: They have three eyes. Prehistoric animals that live in a state of suspended animation in the desert, they come to life — presto! — once water hits them. Talk about instant gratification.
Despite the three eyes, triops weren't what my children considered real pets either. "Do they do anything?" asked Zach. I was tempted to say, "What do you want them to do? They've got three eyes!" But in truth they didn't do much, except eat each other. We ended up with one whopping, two-inch triops. "Wow!" I'd say, shortly before it died, probably of boredom, "just look at those eyes!"
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