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 son's pet was a snail called turbo after watching the film. He often relocates snails to a better home away from his precious tomato plants. I think he misses our dog who was his best friend when she was alive.

My little girl has a gecko ,she's 7 , she calls him Gordon buttercup ( we were unsure whether male or female ) she takes him out when she plays in her room . We can here her talking away apparently sometime Gordon's a dragon or maybe a monster when she's playing her games

DD had an ant farm which she found fascinating and loved to watch them busy at work. It was great to help her learn about nature.

My daughter is scared of real dogs going to very great lengths to avoid them and yet claims she has a pretend dog. I can't work out the logic...

My 5 year old son has imaginary pet dinosaurs including a Protoceratops called Tink!

My son had a huge pebble when he was about 8, he found it on a beach. He thought it was a dinosaur egg and kept it in his bed hoping it would hatch, trouble was his bed was a top bunkbed and the pebble kept falling out in the night and waking us all up. Eventually it 'hatched' when Luke was at school and ran away - oops!!

My DS is scared of spiders but we now have a 'pet' one in the kitchen - in a high corner that I can't reach without getting the steps out. I have shown him how they shed their skin (there is a shed skin in the web) and how they catch flies in their web. It's quite a big one but DS doesn't seem bothered by it, so I'm encouraging him to take an interest in its life cycle.

My son pretends he has a pet giraffe! In reality we have a dog.

My children have a pet ferret named Houdini or Hoody for short. He gives wet slobbery kisses and loves an egg as a treat. He has his own lead & collar for walkies and sleeps in a fleecy shoulder bag. They even took him to school for show & tell.

Favourite pets are their hens who are so tame, cuddled & loved.

Woodlice. He looks for them in the park and bring them home and put them under a loose slab in the garden.

When we were in Wales for a holiday we went crabbing, when we were leaving I explained how we would need to put the crabs back in the water, My daughter begged to keep one saying it was her pet, she had been feeding them and making stories up about them and everything. When I insisted that they needed to be put back she said - well If I can't keep him as my pet, can I eat him then!!!!!!!!

My son once had a large toy dog and insisted he took it everywhere with him :)

Mainly pet rocks here. However there was the case of the disappearing snail....

DD told us she had a pet snail, in her room that she had collected leaves for. Unfortunately we were on our way to a week's holiday at the time....
On our return, no snail. Searched the room, tidied etc. Months later the poor dried out snail was found on top of DD's wardrobe :-(

We looked after a hedgehog for a little while! He then returned to his family!

We had a pet labybird for awhile..... until it flew off

We're not really a family for pets as we go away as a family a lot, however my lad has adopted the most god awful spider in our porch, my wife is petrified of it so she's not happy.

A stick insect was the favourite in our house.

My dd has a pet breast pad at the moment!

My 3 year old has a little tortoise (not a real one - but he likes to pretend it is) which he calls Tortoise. He takes it out for day trips, takes it to pre-school and for walks in the garden. He loves playing hide and seek in the garden and making food for it out of leaves and twigs and giving him a swim in the cats water bowl. He's even made a little home with a box and some hay for his tortoise to keep warm in the winter and can often be found hiding in the rabbits hutch under some straw.

My daughter has put a sign up in her bedroom fireplace saying 'Spider in Residence' so that I don't remove the cobwebs!

My little one is quite attached to her plastic bath turtle! Its really small, only a cheapo i bought from China! But she absolutely loves it, it goes on walks with us, and even sometimes sleeps in her bed at night hahahaha (shes 23 months!)

My daughters (7 and 4) have a herd of woodlice (a la Dick King Smith's Sophie) who live in the wheelbarrow. They are the best kept woodlice in the kingdom.

Oh god glenka my brother had stick insects. They lived in a fish tank and ate the privet hedge from out front, which grew them to monstrous sizes. One day he read that if you put pebbles in the tank their eggs would hatch. My mum let him because she didn't think it would work but one day we got up and the entire tank was covered in minuscule stick insects. They were coming out the holes in the lid, and took over the house for weeks, turning up everywhere. I'm absolutely fine with spiders etc but stick insects freak me out to this day because of that.

The foster children have discovered snails in the garden & they have become their pet family. They are quite happy to let them live in a house they made them in the garden (phew!)