Tell us about your child's most unusual pets for a chance to win a Little Adventurers book plus a Muddy Puddles EcoSplash rain mac

[UrsulaMumsnet]

From award-winning author Philip Ardagh and author/illustrator Elissa Elwick, comes a brand-new picture book series! Meet The Little Adventurers – Finnegan, Sprat, Floss and Peanut. Each week they meet in their top-secret shed HQ, ready to share their fun with you.

This week, Sprat can’t seem to find his cat, Shadow, anywhere. And he absolutely has to have a pet – it’s Bring In A Pet Day! So, instead he finds a leaf, draws a face on it and… Ta-Da! Sprat has a pet: Leafy! But can you really have a leaf as a pet?

With a spread packed with activity ideas and facts in every book in the series, The Little Adventurers will encourage hours of immersive play and ignite the imagination of curious adventurers aged 5+ everywhere!

To win a copy of the book, plus a limited edition print, stickers, a poster and your very own Muddy Puddles EcoSplash rain mac, just tell us about your child's most unusual pets (real or imagined!).

The Little Adventurers is out now, available in hardback and paperback from all good booksellers.

This discussion is sponsored by Walker Books and will close on 24 October

Books T&Cs apply

My daughter's best pet is her bunny toy. She brings the bunny with her everywhere and love to do pretend play with it.

My little Livvy's strangest pet was a collection of worms...

She loves bugs and insects, so you always find her harboring them in unusual places at the worst time

I am not sure which had the strangest. My dd had a car washing sponge called Baby Ammox and my ds has decorated a pebble and called it Fluffy!

My daughter and her friend found a toad in their school field. She brought him home. They named him Smitty. We had a round biscuit tin and an old-fashioned wooden sieve that we used as an aerated top to carry him round in. He briefly lived in a fish tank. They took him into school to study as part of a biology project. No, he was not dissected. After a month or two we felt it only fair to release him back into the environment from which he came!

I have had horses for years so it was inevitable that my little boy age 3 would want to start riding at some point. We have tried many times to get him into a small pony but he won't have it . He will only ride our large cantankerous old mare. She is Evil to everyone else but like an angel for him and he happily grooms her legs, that's all he can reach! And will ride on her for hours. We have taken him to a few shows but we always get people talking behind our backs, sometimes very loudly, that he shouldn't be riding that big horse :( . But they love each other and that's what counts x

My daughter had a pet ladybird called 'Red' that she found in our garden. She kept him on leaves in an old yoghurt pot,until he decided he was bored of being indoors and started to fly around the kitchen,causing chaos! So Mummy had to pretend there was baby ladybird on the phone asking if we knew where his daddy was,so we put the ladybird back into the garden!

My two-and-a-half-year-old LOVES spiders and treats them as her pets when she finds them in the house or in the garden. She calls them Mr Skinny Legs like most Peppa Pig fans do, I assume! :)

My son found a Devil's Coach Horse beetle near our compost . He got me to put it in his bug collecting jars. I wore gloves, just in case!

He called it Devil Bug and showed our neighbours. It was quite aggressive and it's tail kept thrashing around.
He wanted to keep it as a pet 'for protection' . I told him it would be far happier and calmer back in the compost.

I bought 1yr old DS a pair of gorgeous jeans with little braces on them, only for DD (3.5) to proceed to "walk" him around the house while he crawled saying "thank you for my doggy mummy. He's lovely innee?"
Its been weeks and she still calls him doggy. She's even told people at her nursery that we bought her a new doggy. 😒

I have four children and currently have four lidded tubs with air holes in on my windowsill. One has a ladybird in, on has an ant, one has a money spider and one a worm and dirt. my children are 1,3,6&8. Haha. Love them all X

DH and DS(18mo) have a pet Chilean Rose Tarantula called Lemmy after the late Motörhead frontman (even though she's a girl), as one of their fave songs is by Motörhead

grandson has just got a large corn snake and he is often to be found with it draped round his neck. It cant be handled when just fed so my visits are now restricted to that time! - really don't like snakes

The elusive Mouser, occasionally you'll catch a glimpse of him scuttling from the back door to the bowl of food we leave so he doesn't eat us instead.

We made a groke from the moomins out of toilet roll which my son has since named his pet 😂

my daughter calls everything Dave, so we have had frogs called dave, beetles called dave, I cant wait for her to bring her first boyfriend home . lol.

This is my 3 year olds pet hedgehog, Oreo, rocking his top hat 😊 DS loves him to bits, his favourite thing is helping to bath him and snuggling him dry in a blanket!

My DD was told she could choose a fish from the pet shop. She went in and decided that she didn't want a fish, she'd rather have a box of crickets (food for lizards!). We didn't buy her a box but she still talks about wanting the box of crickets.

DD (6) has an imaginary pet alicorn (unicorn pegasus cross for anyone who does't have an equine mad young girl in the house)
She often takes DD's dirty clothes from the wash basket and puts them back in a pile on the floor in DDs bedroom. That being said "Princess Snowflake" often leaves me little note apologising for getting DD in trouble.

DD tried to bring her newly discovered 'pet' slug into the house today. She was not impressed that I wouldn't let him (her?) in; 'but it's only a baby Mummy!'

We live in a town but very near a big park. On Fridays my youngest used to do morning nursery and we'd picnic in the park on the way home. I love making up stories and we named all the wildlife we'd see in the park and then we'd have stories about their lives and the foolish things they'd get upto. Three years on and the robin is still called Fred, the squirrel that runs along the back fence is Cyril.

DD loves to go and chat to Fred he's a very curious little bird and will land very close to her playing as though to start a conversation. He hops around as she plays.

DD's colony of nits were so hard to get rid of once that we thought she was keeping them as pets. Does that count?

My children pick up wood lice and put them in the pocket. Then show us when they remember

My Grandaughter loves a crested carara at our local birds of prey centre. We often go to visit him and she roars with laughter at his strange noise especially when he throws his head right back to touch his back making a strange noise, (hard to explain unless you have encountered one!)
. She stands at his cage shouting 'Come on bird,do it!!!' He follows her backwards and forwards up and down his enclosure. I am thinking of joining their adoption programme and adopting him for her lol

We have 2 real snakes as pets a Corn and a Python which my nearly 3 year old.loves to hold and pet. She adores animals and is always cuddling our cat and feeding the fish. However she also loves snails....so they get brought into the house and put in her dolls house....

Our children 3 & 7 had a rabbit and a tortoise and made them have races, just like the story.