There was a garbage strike here last summer and these hungry plants were a local hit. We just parked one of these near the overflowing kitchen garbage can, and they gobbled day and night. In leaner times, you have to hunt down insects for them (dead flies on the window sill, ants from your garden, etc.), and they even like raw hamburger! Be sure to read the instructions, because these special plants need special attention.

This beats the snot out of my old ant farm as a kid. The little guys tunnel through a blue gel, creating gnarly organic artwork both above and below the surface. Buy more than one unit and string them together. Optional accessories include an LED light base so this ant-quarium glows in the dark. You can populate your farm through the US Postal Service, but it’s even better if you can locate local ants – a queen ant would be ideal – and start from scratch.

I kid you not. Mail order frogs. Tadpoles, actually, hatched in Florida, raised by you. These critters live in fresh water, and some of them live to be 15 years old. When I was a kid, I would scoop frog eggs out of a pond and watch them hatch into tadpoles and morph into frogs. Since there are no clean ponds left in America, we have to buy the tadpoles through the mail. Still, it’s a way cool learning experience, and they don’t poop on the carpet.

I didn’t even have an official Sea-Monkeys Zoo when I was a kid. Instead, I poured the just-arrived-by-mail packet into a mayonnaise jar of water and watched the miracle of life unfold on my dresser top. Sea-Monkeys are considered the ultimate start-up pet. Kids learn to watch after a dependent form of life, keeping their water clean, feeding them, giving them the proper light and shade. Mine dried up into a green film after a few months, convincing me to never have children.