Perfect classroom pet

[Targhee]

...for the family who loves animals but likes to take off on short notice for a few days at a time?

 

We have a dog (she comes on trips with us) and 6 chickens, who do fine for 2-3 days on their own. We are looking for something small-ish as a class pet (lives in a tank or cage). Smell is a big factor, as we have keen sniffers in our family. Any suggestions?

 

And before you say fish, that's not an option because of a certain point of disagreement between myself and my son.

[JustEm]

tortoise 

[JustEm]

I fed my old one mostly fresh veggies but if I was going to be away for a few days he would do fine on the pellets.  I never felt like he produced a huge smell.  That or a snake.  They only eat like once a week or longer depending on the breed.

[amazzie]

We had aquatics frogs. They are very easy to take care of and can go a few days without food. They are from a company called Grow-A-Frog. They will even take them back if you can't or don't want to care for them anymore. We had ours for three or four years but gave them away when we moved from Texas to Alaksa.

 

The adult frogs are easier than the polliwogs. We tried those first and they didn't make it so when the company replaced them I asked for grown ups instead and it worked out well.

[Dmmetler]

Snake. A rodent-eating snake only eats once a week or less, depending on age, and poops at most once a feed, so cage cleaning is easy, and while our snakes do seem to be more active when they have people to watch, don't seem to care about being left alone. A male Fossorial boa (sand boa, rosy boa, or rubber boa) or male Western Hognose snake both are options that can live in a 5 gal terrarium. hognose are better display animals (they're the drama queens of the snake world), the boas are easier for kids to handle, but can be boring, because they tend to live underground most of the time. A rubber boa is honestly about as close to a living toy snake as you can get.

[Jen500]

Another vote for hermit crabs.

[Targhee]

Thanks for all the great suggestions!

 

My husband and I had snakes years ago, and the freaked out my mom and sister when they stayed with us. I am a little hesitant to get one again for this reason, though we love snakes around here.

 

A hadn't thought if a tortoise. I had a turtle once but tank requirements (cleaning, filtering, space) were a drag, so a tortoise is a great option.

 

Do hermit crabs make a lot of noise at night? What do they eat? Do they tolerate handling?

 

What are the cleaning/tank requirements for the aquatic frogs? Do they tolerate handling? Are they those tiny little guys (2-3" adults) I sometimes see with the fish at pet stores.

 

Fish are not an option.

[Targhee]

Forgive the typing errors - on my phone :-S

[duckens]

Blue Death-Feigning Beetles!  When you pick them up, they fall over pretending to be dead.  It's a defensive mechanism.  If a spider catches the beetle, it plays dead until the spider loses interest.  Spiders like live food.  Then, after a while, the beetle just rolls over and wanders off!

--They are cheaper than a dog, cat, or tortoise.  The expensive part is shipping overnight, because they ARE live animals.

--They  only live a few years, so it is less of a commitment time-wise.  It's not a big deal of disposal if they die.
--They won't grow any bigger than they are now.

--They do not bite.  The 3yo and 7yo handle them regularly. 
--We have 3 of them in a little plastic tank (like this, 1 gallon size) with sand in the bottom (and some bark from the park because they like to hide).
--The tank NEVER has to be cleaned.  I'm not even sure if these guys poop.  No odor that I or Loverboy have ever noticed.
--Food: Get the beetle jelly.  It comes in the size of a little container of restaurant creamer for coffee.  It looks like jello.  Just rip off the top, and you're set!  It doesn't smell; it doesn't rot or mold.   It does dry out, so I replace it when it gets low, before it's all gone.  I have started leaving them bites of fruit in a jar lit, but you don't have to.
--If the little buggers get forgotten for a week of vacation, they will probably be fine.  We left ours for 4 days vacation this year.

 

And, you'll be known as the coolest mom ever!  All the neighborhood kids will envy your kids!

Peter Clausen of Bugs in Cyberspace is the person to email if you have further questions.  He has been extremely helpful to us as we explore bugs as pets and making recommendations when we were ready to move past just BDF Beetles.

[Farrar]

You can't take the aquatic frogs out to handle them.  The tank requires very little cleaning.  It's like having a fish, except it's a frog.

 

I second a turtle.  The biggest concerns there is that you need to make sure they have a good sun lamp because otherwise their shells get soft.  And they are total breeding grounds for salmonella.  So you can handle them and "play" with them a little, but you have to be super vigilant about washing hands.  They do need their enclosures cleaned regularly, but a couple of days is fine.  They'll keep.

[kentuckymom]

I'm going against the grain and suggest a mammal - a Syrian hamster. My 9 year old got one at Christmas this year, and she's a wonderful pet. She's very social. You can take her out and pet her or let her run around in her ball. You can build a little obstacle course for her. Yet her cage only needs to be cleaned every couple of weeks (she has a really big cage, but even with a small cage it wouldn't be more than once a week). We've never actually left her alone for several days because we have a cat who needs to be fed daily, but Squirrelboy only needs to refill her water and food a couple times a week, so she could be left over a period of a few days without a problem. 

 

Unlike some of the aforementioned animals, hamsters don't tend to freak anyone out. You don't know me so this doesn't matter, but I would not want to stay in a house that had pet snakes or bugs due to my great distaste for snakes and bugs. I have yet to meet someone who is creeped out by hamsters. People who don't find them interesting, sure, but not people who shiver when they hear the word "hamster."

[Spryte]

You can't take the aquatic frogs out to handle them.  The tank requires very little cleaning.  It's like having a fish, except it's a frog.

 

I second a turtle.  The biggest concerns there is that you need to make sure they have a good sun lamp because otherwise their shells get soft.  And they are total breeding grounds for salmonella.  So you can handle them and "play" with them a little, but you have to be super vigilant about washing hands.  They do need their enclosures cleaned regularly, but a couple of days is fine.  They'll keep.

 

We have turtles.  Agree with the above.  The cleaning isn't anyone's favorite, but once you have a routine it's not bad.  Practice good handwashing.  

[yucabird]

We have had our tarantula for a couple years.  It is an interesting creature that doesn't require much care.  

[Targhee]

My grandmother was freaked out by my hamster when I was a kid.

 

All the same a hamster is consideration. Son was asking about a sugar glider, hedgehog, or a chinchilla. I don't have experience with these, but my assumption would be they need their food daily. And there's that awful mammal smell - wet bedding :-P

[Targhee]

My sister would never visit again if we had a tarantula. She has a severe fear of spiders.

[Farrar]

A friend had a chinchilla when I was a kid.  They're very clean.  No wet bedding that I remember.  They like to bathe in ashes (she had grown up out west and they had saved buckets full of Mt. St. Helens ashes for it!).  Very little smell.  But I would assume they'd need food daily.  Maybe someone else will know...

[MotherGoose]

DD asked to "keep" a snail she found in the garden that I was going to kill because it was eating my plants when she was 4. I said yes hoping she'd forget. She didn't. It's since died but we've had baby snails (of course the original needed a friend) and also roly-polies that moved in. We keep them in a covered aquarium. We recreated the garden environment and she feeds them the plants I find them on in the garden. If they die I don't feel bad because I was going to kill it anyway.

[Wheres Toto]

My mother would be more freaked out by anything that seems like a rodent than she is by our snake. 

 

We have a red albino corn snake.  Right now he's about the width of a pencil but longer.  He's a lot friendlier and less skittish than the "usual" according to snake forums.  He'll crawl out onto my hand when I put it in his cage. 

 

 

We've had people over who don't like snakes.  My MIL, our nanny and her mom really can't stand them.  But, he's mostly under his bedding or curled up on a tree limb during the day so it's not like he's right there in your face.  I guess it will get harder when he gets bigger.

[Dmmetler]

My mother would be more freaked out by anything that seems like a rodent than she is by our snake.

 

We have a red albino corn snake. Right now he's about the width of a pencil but longer. He's a lot friendlier and less skittish than the "usual" according to snake forums. He'll crawl out onto my hand when I put it in his cage.

 

 

We've had people over who don't like snakes. My MIL, our nanny and her mom really can't stand them. But, he's mostly under his bedding or curled up on a tree limb during the day so it's not like he's right there in your face. I guess it will get harder when he gets bigger.

 

Not really. We have a 5 foot female corn and a 4 1/2 foot male ball python, and a lot of people never realize that there's a snake in those big boxes. One thing I've realized about our large female corn is that she doesn't seem to know just how big she actually is-she still reacts to out cats as though she were a hatchling that they could easily kill, for example, so a new person will tend to lead her to curl up in her hide, usually in a way that she can observe, but without being seen. BPs are nocturnal ambush predators, so they hide most of the time during the day anyway.

 

The reason I didn't suggest either corns or BP's is that while they're still considered small snakes, anything that wants a 40 gal+ terrarium as an adult isn't exactly a small pet anymore by most people's standards.

 

 

 

Honestly, DD's toy snakes cause more of a problem for people who are scared of snakes than the live ones, because those suckers can pop up anywhere, and some of them look pretty real. I do make sure anyone coming to our house knows that there are snakes here, though.

[Coco_Clark]

We had aquatics frogs. They are very easy to take care of and can go a few days without food. They are from a company called Grow-A-Frog. They will even take them back if you can't or don't want to care for them anymore. We had ours for three or four years but gave them away when we moved from Texas to Alaksa.

 

The adult frogs are easier than the polliwogs. We tried those first and they didn't make it so when the company replaced them I asked for grown ups instead and it worked out well.

 

A note about the grow-a-frog company.  We got the polliwogs this year and after 3 months they hadn't changed and died :(

 

I asked around a bit and found 6 other families who had gotten polliwogs from them.  None had changed intro frogs.  All had died in 4 weeks to 4 or 5 months.  I'm yet to find a family it has worked for. Anyone here had polliwog success?

 

Anways, I wouldn't suggest their polliwogs. 

[Matryoshka]

I'll second or third the snake recommendation.  We have a ball python - one of the easiest care pets we've ever had, and no smell. 

[Holly]

We've had finches in our classroom, and I loved them.  They make a bit of noise, but are fairly quiet compared to other birds.  I tried parakeets, but they get so noisy.  They are currently outside the classroom and are sometimes still too loud when we're doing a read-aloud.  Two years ago we raised a couple clutches of parakeets.  It was a great learning experience for all of us!

 

We've also had hermit crabs and they are fun to watch...although they don't do much.  lol  I think my DC enjoy the birds more than the hermit crabs.

 

Both can be left for several days if you put out enough food and water.  

[Dmmetler]

I haven't done grow a frogs officially, but have raised tadpoles to frogs. In the wild, Southern Leopard frogs have about a 1-100 survival rate from egg to adult frog. In captivity, 1-10 is supposedly excellent. Leopards are one of the two species used most for grow a frog kits, with African Clawed frogs being the other ones.  The big problem with leopard frogs is that the tads start out as herbivores, and move to being carnivores. There is a really, really brief window of time to change the food they're provided or else they will literally starve to death (or eat each other-that happens, too). They also have to be able to get out of the water, because when they develop legs, they lose those gills fast! We started with 12 tads and ended up with 5 adult frogs. One lived to her first winter, but didn't come out of brumation, the 2nd died last winter. Three are still alive and hopping. 

 

I will also add that we had multiple aquariums/terrariums set up for months, until the last tadpole had legs and was big enough to join the others without becoming food. It wasn't a small project.

 

 

If you want a frog, get an adult one-and I strongly suggest a terrestrial frog or completely aquatic frog, because the land-water requirements for DD's leopard frogs is a pain in the tail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Acadie]

I still miss our gerbils.  They are desert animals, so they are very efficient in terms of intake and output of fluids.  Which means they pee very little, and do not stink!  And you can go a few weeks between cage cleanings.  You can leave a food bowl and water bottle for a few days.  They have wake and sleep cycles around the clock, so they are awake for periods of time during the day (unlike nocturnal rodents--most hamsters are nocturnal, if I'm not mistaken, which means they're active when you're sleeping, and you don't get to observe much cuteness).

 

I chose gerbils for a family pet when I was completely overwhelmed with my children's health issues, and I just loved them.  They were no trouble at all.  Sometimes I would hand feed them their favorite sunflower seeds, pet them, and thank them for being so easy.  I could forget them for a few days, and they were fine.  They were also fun to hold and take out to run around (though you need to block off any space under doorways or crevices where they could escape).  Your kids can get creative with making cardboard gerbil climbing runs in the bathtub or in a Rubbermaid bin.  

 

My girls loved them too, and learned so much about rodent and prey-animal behavior.  I thought they'd be a great retirement pet, too.

 

We went with a breeder because the first pet store I went to could not tell me which were female and which male.  Um, no.  I wanted to make sure we didn't breed future generations.  They were still very cheap--$16 for a pair of brothers.

 

Let us know what you decide!

 

Amy

 

 

[kiwik]

Mice but if you don't want smell you need to get girls.

[wintermom]

Do hermit crabs make a lot of noise at night? What do they eat? Do they tolerate handling?

 

 

 

Our hermit crabs don't make a lot of noise at night. Just some climbing noises. They eat popcorn, Cheerios and crushed almonds. They do tolerate handling. They will climb over small things and crawl across flat surfaces.

 

They are also very easy to transport, if you go away for a longer period of time and need to leave them at someone else's house.

[happypamama]

Leopard gecko!

 

Ours is eight and still doing very well. Low maintenance. Clean the tank every so often, buy a bunch of crickets and mealworms every week or so, and give her a few of them a few times a week. Once she's out of the very young stage, she has a tail that can sustain her for several days if need be. If we run out of food for her, she'll be fine for several days. We go away a few times a year, and we have maybe had someone feed her once. Otherwise we just tank her up, and she's good.

 

No smell. No noise. And she's cute! She will come out and look at us when we feed her, and sometimes she will bask in the light.

 

The downside is that the setup is a little expensive. Cage, stuff for her to climb on and hide in, light with timer, heating mat for underneath. It took, iirc, DH a bit of time to get the temp and humidity just right. But not worse than taking a kitten to the vet.

[AlisonK]

We had Grow-a-Frogs and they worked too well! They lasted for years! We finally gave them to a friend after about 3 years and they  had them for another 3-4 years! I guess you never know with those creatures. :confused1:

[wintermom]

Another super easy pet would be Sea Monkeys. They are fun to watch swim, WAY easier to keep alive than fish, and very low maintenance. The start up costs are very cheap, too, and they don't take up much room.

[kolamum]

Hermit Crabs are good little pets, but most people aren't aware they take a bit more upkeep then realised. They do thrive far better in a warm humid atmosphere so a reptile heating pad, lamp, or rock is going to serve you better. You'll also want to mist the cage daily with a water bottle to give it that humid feel. While they don't eat much they & you could get away with just flakes/pellets if you went away for a few days they will thrive more on fresh veggies & raw meat. They also need fresh water & salted water in order to fully bathe in. Hermit Crabs actually have gills & they need that salt water & humid atmosphere so as to slowly, over a long period of time, suffocate to death. 

 

We've had guinea pigs which we've left alone for a few days, but they do, in my opinion, have a high stink factor. You can limit that by using cat litter in the bottom of the cage & then paper pellets atop that. Our piggies have all lived for 8 or more years. We feed them on dry food, daily serves of fruit & veg, as well as hay. When we'd go away we'd feed them well before leaving & then leave: a hay cube per piggie, a full water bottle, a couple of carrots &/or celery heart/stump &/or core of lettuce, as well as a fully topped up bowl of dry food. We'd feed them immediately upon returning home. Our longest leaving them is 3 days. So they are only without food fresh from us that middle day as we feed them before leaving & upon returning.