Please keep in mind that I cried when each of them died. I tend to get very attached to things, so I easily consider them a pet. I then forget that they don't live as long as real pets–dogs, cats, rabbits–do.

• Bud, a tadpole that I got on a Girl Scout trip (3 days)
• a monarch butterfly that I raised from a caterpillar, also from a Girl Scout trip (9 weeks)
• Lucky, a beagle-Jack Russell mix that we got from the pound & then gave back because he wouldn't stop running away (5 months)
• Fish 1 from the fair (3 months)
• Fish 2 from the fair (2 years)
• Sarah, the first guinea pig (3 years)
• Cocoa, my sister's guinea pig (2 years?)
• Cookie, my guinea pig that became my sister's because I went to college & became VERY allergic to them (3 or 4 years)
• Mork & Mindy, 2 hermit crabs that I got on vacation in Florida (3 months; 1.5 years)
• pretty sure there was another hermit crab after that
• various avocado pits that I tried for months at a time to sprout (ongoing, average life span 3 weeks)
• various house plants that I and my mother bought for me (average life span 3 months)
• dahlias I got this summer that got this spotty, plague-like disease (2 months)
• Turtle, a fish that Joe won for me (2 weeks)
• Winston, the fish I got after Turtle (2 days)
• George, the fish I got after Winston that choked on a rock & died (3 months)
• Jill, the guinea pig I got in college that got hypothermia because she was too little (1 week)
• Baby, my Netherland Dwarf rabbit that's still going strong (living with my parents this year until I get back to the States)