Reasons Never To Take The Class Pet Home on Vacation

Months ago, my son's 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. P, sent around a sign-up sheet for volunteers to take the class frog, Kermit, home over vacation breaks.

Clearly delirious, I thought, "This definitely sounds like something a good, involved mom would do!" and promptly signed my name in blood on the dotted line.

Before I'd really had a chance to think about what I'd done, we were trundling out of my son's classroom to our car with a huge heat lamp, a shoebox of extra bulbs and other amphibian accessories, and a big, heavy tank filled with a terrified American green tree frog and 13 nasty crickets hiding in the leaves.

If you're ever thinking about taking the class pet home, just know that it will be a terrible idea. Because...

1. You'll constantly be worrying about whether you killed it or not. 

I was bent over Kermit's tank 30-plus times a day checking to see if he was still breathing. I don't even do that with my newborn babies, you guys.

Nonstop I interrogated Phillip, as if he knew anything more than I did about frogs: "It's not moving. It hasn't moved today. Is it not supposed to move all day? Are their eyes supposed to be half-open when they're sleeping? The teacher said we'd need to feed him again on Tuesday but there are still lots of crickets in there. How much is he supposed to eat? Is he sick? How do you know if a frog is sick? Why isn't he eating?!?"

Neurotic? Yes. But what else was I supposed to do? What if I, in my zeal to be supermom, ended up murdering my son's pet?

2. Its food will totally gross you out. 

I didn't even think about the fact that it would be eating live crickets until I was in Mrs. P's classroom picking Kermit up, when it was already too late to run screaming from the room.

I could barely stand to grab the water dishes to refill them with fresh water because there were crickets near them, or on them. And it gets better — I had to drive to Petco to buy more midway through the week and then DRIVE HOME WITH THEM IN MY CAR.

Live bugs: The thing I least wanted to buy, ever.

I'm only mildly exaggerating when I say I needed to shower after I got home and then fight the urge to douse the car with gasoline and burn it.

I never even knew bugs creeped me out so much until this experience.

3. Let's talk more about its food — loose in your house. 

When I discovered a random cricket had gotten free from the tank somehow, a noise escaped my mouth that I don't think I've even made in labor. (It was only then that my son chose to tell me, "Yeah, that happens all the time in my class.")

WHAAAAAT?!?

I was jumping around screaming "Kill it! Kill it!" and Phillip smashed it with a decorative wooden block on our desk that said "Family." As in, if you start hopping around my house with your creepy roving antennae and your beady bug eyes, our family will destroy you. And we will like it.

4. Your other kids will terrorize it. 

Aside from my worries about our very curious 2-year-old figuring out how to open the cage, I had to remind the other kids constantly not to tap on the glass.

I was convinced that the stress of this combined with the noise would definitely cause the poor frog to die (see #1.)

5. You will remember why you don't own a pet, or even any live plants, for that matter. 

I never wanted to take Kermit home. I only did it because I wanted to create lasting warm fuzzy childhood memories for my son. For him one day to remember that his mom did fun things like let the class frog stay at their house for the week.

Call me heartless, but I'm just not a pet person. And even if I were, we would definitely not be getting a frog. There's the gross factor, which I've already covered. They're expensive (six crickets, a week's worth of food, cost $1.22 which means I'd be shelling out over $60 a year to feed the thing.) And most of all, they're boring. It was like Mardi Gras for my kids every time Kermit moved an inch and a half, because he typically just sat there all day appearing to be dead.

So I was basically cleaning out his stinky water dishes and getting the heebie-jeebies from all the crickets staring at me all week for my own enjoyment.


In short, I was relieved to get Kermit back to Mrs. P at the end of the week. I think he may have even been more anxious to get out of here:

If a frog can look distressed, this is probably it.

Incidentally, on the way back to school to drop Kermit off, I asked my son, "So did you like having Kermit at our house over the break?"

He shrugged at me and said, "I didn't really care."

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