Our Pets

The Brooks's Pets as dictated by Naomi Brooks

1. The snake in one cage is Titus. He is a carpet python. Pythons are good pets and are not poisonous. They have many layers of skin. When our snake sheds the old skin, new skin is underneath.

2.

Rhiannon with the newt

We have two more snakes. In the first cage is Lady who is a boy. The snake in the second cage is James who is medium orange with light orange spots. James is the girl. (Grandma inserts for the reader -- don’t be as confused as I am about the cross-gender naming. Apparently the snakes' names have everything to do with Thomas the Tank Engine series and nothing to do with if they are male or female.) You know how humans have round eyes. In the snake world, snakes have different kinds of eyes. Every year Lady and James lay eggs. Mostly they have many eggs and when they hatch, we put them in a cage and take care of the babies until they get a little bigger and then we give them to people we know.

3. We have a lizard, Pebbles, who is a girl. Pebbles’s cage is in Lisa’s room. Some snakes eat lizards. Our snake Titus would, but we don’t give Pebbles to Titus.

4. We have some turtles – five. I remember only one name.

5. We have tree frogs. They have names: one is Green Lightening. The other is named Black Thunder. They eat crickets. We put a few in their cage and the tree frogs catch them.

6. We also have Griffin, a cute Beagle with long ears. He loves food and will steal it off of the counter.

Mary showing the newt's belly

7. I have one fish in my bedroom, a fighting fish whose name is Greenie, because it has a green tail.

8. Char is the name of Xavier’s newt.

The End by Naomi Brooks