As a new pet blogger here at Families.com I felt I should write an introduction post and share the story of my mini-zoo with everyone. I’ve had pets ever since I could remember. In fact, none of my homes have felt complete unless there was at least one four-legged furry critter running around.
About ten years ago this love for all things feathered, furry or finned hit a high point. My second daughter worked at Petsmart at the time so she always had some tale of woe about a guinea pig, hamster, snake, fish, or other animal that had been dumped off there. Softhearted fool that I am, I took them in until we had a staggering number of pets—more than twenty.
For anyone living on a small farm, this wouldn’t seem like much, but we lived in the suburbs of Baltimore and our basement had now been converted into a mini-zoo. Sure, this was a great experience for my home schooled girls, but after awhile too much is too much.
Our list of animals included:
*Two rabbits
*Two guinea pigs
*Two hamsters
*Three cats
*One dog
*An iguana
*Two geckos
*Three snakes
*One rat
*Two mice (which later became about 52 mice)
*Two cockatiels
*Countless fish
It’s quite expensive to feed and house so many pets, so this definitely didn’t fit my frugal budget. However, a few positive things that came out of this situation is that my kids learned a lot about the responsibility of taking care of other living things, and I accumulated a wealth of knowledge about pets I normally never would have read about. I’d have to say that the iguana was my least favorite pet, but I know others who treat their pet iguana like a child. I tend to like furry creatures much better.
These days I prefer to have less animals to take care of. We do have three cats and one dog. Although, we recently acquired another dog that someone had abandoned, as well as a rat. Now that I think about it, I worry that I may be starting up my mini-zoo collection again. I just hope my kids don’t find a homeless elephant.