I have a confession to make. An actual lizard resides at our house. I am not exactly the type of person who would willingly welcome a reptile to share my dwelling, but alas, I was outvoted by the other three members of my family, a process which makes one think democracy is highly overrated.

We could not buy a cute little puppy or a fluffy kitten because that would have required turfing out my husband Keith, who is allergic to anything with hair follicles. I let my daughters decide Keith’s fate. They wisely chose to keep him, so now we are the proud owners of a hairless beast named Spotty.

Now, Spotty wouldn’t be so bad if it was just him. I have to admit he kind of grows on you. The problem comes because Spotty, though I have tried to persuade him otherwise, actually eats like a lizard. And that means crickets. LIVE crickets.

My husband has the revolting ability to actually grab these insects in his hand and toss them in the cage. I have evolved passed that stage to the "try to trap them in a plastic bag, close your eyes, whimper and hope for the best" method. Naturally, this does not always work. About a week after we got Spotty, one escaped. I screamed. The girls screamed. We leapt onto chairs. I yelled for Katie to grab some shoes to I could swat the thing when it emerged from the closet. So there the three of us were, Rebecca shining the flashlight, me armed with two sandals ready to finish the little bugger off, and Katie simply screaming. Keith now does all the feeding.

We bought Spotty, of course, because every child should have a pet. I have not completely figured out why, because it seems to me that usually the parents end up taking most of the responsibility for feeding and walking them. And, of course, your ability to go away for the weekend or even take a summer vacation is seriously compromised, because somebody needs to care for these pets. But nevertheless, "kids need pets" seems to be a mantra in our society.

For many kids, pets are windows into life’s messy realities. Many children’s first encounter with the Grim Reaper is when burying a goldfish in a shoebox. Sometimes such lessons come too vividly. One friend of mine once had her cat spayed, only to have the animal react badly to the anaesthetic. So there the vet was, ventilating this cat (I didn’t even know they DID that), until the poor creature came back to life. The grateful family brought the cat home, only to have the mother promptly back over it down the driveway the next day.

Though death may be a lesson we only reluctantly teach our kids, many parents deliberately teach their kids about birth. My friend Barb has a beautiful Sheltie named Shadow. Before getting Shadow fixed, the family decided to try to mate her. They soon found, however, that this is one of those things that sounds perfectly reasonable in theory, but can be awfully messy in practice. Shadow, you see, is a rather large female dog. All the dogs of friends that Barb chose to mate her with were, shall we say, much smaller. They would put the two dogs in the garage, and the poor little boy dog, eager as he was, just couldn’t reach. They eventually had to build him a ramp. The kids, though, did have the delight of witnessing the adorable puppies being born (though Barb made sure they didn’t similarly witness the conception).

My children have decided that they, too, would like to witness some babies being born, and therefore they have decided that we should mate Spotty. Because of the nature of democracy, and the fact that my husband thinks this would be very educational for our homeschooled offspring, I seem to be outvoted once again.

If Spotty could register a vote, I think he’d be right in there with my daughters. Lately he’s been wandering around the cage looking for something—and it’s not crickets, if you know what I mean. So if anyone out there has a really cute female leopard gecko, send me a note. We have just the lizard for you.

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