other animals !

On this page you can see photos of Ben's other pets that we mentioned earlier. Which are all residents in his room  along with his rattys (apart from the cats and dog). 

Barney !  

Barney is a five year old rough coated Jack Russel terrier. Barney is the complete opposite of the stereotype most  people have of these terriers, he is friendly, playful and extremely bouncy!  and not at all "snappy". All though he does carry the typical Jack Russel beg and cheekiness ! Barney's hobbies include eating cat poo, chasing frogs (of which we have many) and running away from the cats "BIG WIMP!"

Johnny ! 

This is Johnny (a moggy, with a hint of Siamese) other names include Jon Jon, Jonathan, Tabby, Tabatha, Tab  Tab and Little B*gger when she is tearing up the Tunisian rug. Johnny is 15 years old and was found on construction site in a box along with Poppy her sister. Jonathan  is actually a girl cat despite her name as my Dad sexed her wrong when they where rescued!

Poppy !

Poppy is not a cat to be taken lightly despite her size she can delivery a nice little wallop when she does not want to be picked up which makes giving her any medication quite a trial as I'm sure Barney will confirm. She has Barney well trained very well in that if he gets to close to her whilst playing or is making too much noise with one of his toys all she has to do is life a paw casually and he will drop the toy and bolt from the room! 

Fern and Pety !

Fern and Pety are Axolotl. Axolotl are a unique species of salamander that remain in their premature "tadpole" stage and are fully aquatic amphibians. There is a obvious difference in size between the female who is allot larger ( Fern on the left ) and the male (Pety on the right ) although the photos do not show this. Axolotl have the ability to regenerate limbs (arms, eyes, gills etc). You can see in Ferns photo ( left ) that her right hand side gills are allot smaller and are at the moment regenerating, this is due to the fact that when they were at the aquatic center (my work) on sale a Fantail (goldfish) jumped over and bit them off!   

Giant African land snails !

These are relatively simple creatures that can lay up to 100 eggs at a time which they hide in the dirt and hatch within 4 weeks if you do not find them, which has happened to me several times now leading to a rather increased population of a few hundred snails which will eventually grow to the size of your fist and maybe more!   The younger snails have very attractively striped shells! 

peggy !

Peggy is a rainbow crab, who was a rescue from my work.  As you can see from the first photo she is missing quite a few legs  and one of her main claws, this is probably due to the crabs fighting over food as they are not very sociable animals and as she was the smallest in the tank she was the one that got picked on. 

She now lives in a nice quite tank in my room by herself, where she will eventually shed her exoskeleton and grow back her missing limbs. 

Oscar !

This is Oscar which we believe is a reed frog. There is a long story attached to this little frog and how he came to live with me.  He originated from south Africa where he was transported on freshly picked flowers where he was then flown to Holland where he spent two weeks in a deep freeze to keep the flowers fresh, from here he was then flown to the U.K and to the garden center where my aquatics shop is located. When  he was discovered in the flowers they did not know what to do and so brought him down to the aquatics shop and gave him to my boss. He spent about a month under the counter in a small tank where he did not move or eat. By this time my boss had, had enough of him and offered him to me with in ten minuets of me getting him home and giving him a more suited environment  he was happily hopping around and feeding ! 

The reason why we say that "we believe he is a reed frog" is that both Emily and I spent 5 hours each  searching for him on the internet and came to the conclusion that he was a Painted reed frog. This was due to more reason then just his physical appearance (e.g.. his size, behavior and a very distinctive and ear piercing croak) as there is a wide variety of colours in this species of frog and they can also change colour quite rapidly!

Stick insects !

I keep two species of stick insects. The Australian stick insect (the outside photos) that grows to 15 cm in length and get rather round. The Indian stick insects (the center photo) one of the most commonly kept stick insects which can get to approx 8 cm in length. Both are very easy to keep living on a nice cheap diet of ivy and bramble leaves.  

If you wish to contact Ben for what ever reasons about his rats or other pets then please feel free to email him at [email protected]

Ben feels that it is necessary to point out that he is not an authority on any of the animals mention on this page. 

                                                                                                    Last updated 27th April 2002.

 All photo's and some art work are produced by me, unless stated otherwise. Please do not take any of my art work or photos as allot of work has gone into them. If you do wish to use some of my art/gifs/photos then please email me for permission first.

Copyright Podels 2001-2002.

Disclaimer = I do not claim to be an authority on rodents or rats and any information on this page is just opinions and advice and is by no means a substitute for good books or veterinary advice.  All the toys on the toys page are just ideas and may not have been tried out so it is up to you to implement them and judge there safety.