Great Pets!: An Extraordinary Guide to Usual and unusual Family Pets

Sara Stein is nuts about animals. Over the years she's raised a monkey, a coyote, and a horned toad, and she came within a heartbeat of taking home a wallaby. In this mammoth pet encyclopedia she identifies dozens of unusual and not-so-unusual critters that make great pets in the house, in the yard, and in the wild. Stein even suggests temporary pets kids can bring home to observe overnight and return to their natural habitat the next morning.

Stein's recommendations suit every domestic situation. Skunks, for example, work well in an apartment. A big backyard is ideal for keeping a goat or two. If parents don't want a pet running through the house, tarantulas are happy in a nice glass vivarium. And if indoor pets are out of the question, Stein explains how to befriend the pigeons in the park or the rabbits in the yard.

For all her enthusiasm, Stein takes a common-sense approach to pets. Each entry discusses diet, housing, special problems, life span, and just how tame you can expect the pet to become. She also tells you whom to call if you wind up with a sick snake or an angry parrot. Stein devotes an entire chapter to which type of vivarium, aquarium, serpentarium, cage, or hutch is best suited to which creature. She even explains how to build an inexpensive-but-comfortable habitat.

Whether you like them furry, slithery, slimy, or scaly; whether you want one that swims, crawls, leaps, flies, or hardly moves at all, you'll find a pet in this book suited to every family's taste.