Is there a newer term for ‘slacker’? How about ‘citizen’?
Why, you’re absolutely correct!
Note: don’t put the sloth’s habitat anywhere near where beer and munchies are stored. Even a slacker has to get off the couch to refuel now and then!
Thanks, that’s new criteria to consider. You don’t want even a slow moving pet who eats the same food as you or drinks beer. You want your food where you can reach it, and your pet at least close enough to see it. Though from a scientific perspective, it would be an interesting “survival of the fittest” question between sloths and slackers in terms of competition for food.
I second the sponge.
Now that you mention it though: having a pet that eats the same stuff you do (assuming you get a pet you have to feed at all) would be a huge savings in terms of effort. No need to waste time getting special pet food, just toss it some pizza crusts. Definitely avoid something that might want your beer though! Water-drinkers only (I assume the slacker at least has plumbing so the water requirement should be easy enough).
I wonder if a slime mold would make a good pet? Slime mold can move (slime mold), if not terribly fast.
Sponges are looking promising – I had mostly thought of tham as plants, but consider my ignorance fought. So what do you have to put in the water to keep them alive?
Spiders don’t seem to move around too much unless they’re eating or fixing their web. The just sit there for hours, not moving a millimeter. If you’re a really accomplished slacker you might already have one of these in a corner somewhere anyway. Can’t get much lazier than having a pet you weren’t even aware of.
Freshwater snails. I had a friend who put an old aquarium filter in her garage for over a year, then sent it to me when mine broke down. There was a colony of snails still alive in there which proceeded to take over my tank.
You can kill a few, but you can’t get rid of them. (unless you employ a few Clown Loaches, Bwaaaaa ha ha ha!) And they are actually kinda fun to watch, in a slow, dreamy sort of way.
I actually ended up raising blue snails for a while, they were easy and fun. I recommend starting your slackers with an aquarium of fish, making them too lazy to clean it, and then killing off the fish and having your slacker respond by simply declaring it a “Snail Tank.”
There could be an intermediate stage where the Cherry Shrimps were doing well, but the slacker doesn’t miss their “quick startling movements” once the nitrates finally build up beyond their tolerance.
Or, he could kill off the shrimp in an ill-advised algae scraping session, thereby proving that effort is not only meaningless, but dangerous. (In a poorly kept tank the algae covering the glass actually removes a lot of the toxic waste, and helps keep the critters alive.)
Norwegian Blue
EcoSpheres are what you want for the ultimate slacker. Place where it can get some light and forget it.
Tarantulas can be fed every couple of weeks. I’ve seen several setups that were cleaned once a year, if that. Low waste, no discernible odor and can be kept in a plastic shoebox.
A 21st Century slacker will order food to be delivered (through wireless internet – no need to get off the couch or out of bed), and there’s no reason pet food can’t be delievered too.
Hmmm… slime mold? I wonder how a housecleaner would react to, “Don’t wipe away my pet”?
Plankton. And you’d have to change the water every so often to remove waste material. If you get bored, you can cut off a chunk, squeeze it through cheesecloth to separate it into individual cells, and put the slurry of cells in a new tank. Come back in the morning, and the cells will have reassembled themselves back into sponge tissue.
Oh, and koalas are assholes.
Hah.
The Tyranasaurs are just biding their time, waiting until we’re all facing the other way.
Then…
POW!
They steal our wallets!
My cats sleep about 22 hours a day.
Leeches! They are no-maintenance. They can go for over a year without food. And when you do want to feed them…
I’ve worked in the pet industry on and off for a good part of my adult life. If you’re serious, and not just looking for jokes–which seems to be the case; you’ve responded to most of the obvious jokes only with practical objections–then I can tell you from experience: cat.
Again, this is if you’re serious.
People would come into the pet store I worked in and be like “We want an unusual pet, not a cat or dog, you know something unique. But it has be very low maintenance.” And I’d be like, “Bzzzt. Wrong. Get out.”
You know why cats and dogs are the universal pets? Because they work. They’re uniquely adapted to live well with humans.
Everything else will be higher maintenance. Turtles are high maintenance. Some birds are higher-maintenance than others, but they’re all higher-maintenance than cats or dogs.
Lowest possible maintenance animals: if you have a back yard and don’t mind the accumulation of shit, then a dog. Even so, zero maintenance is abuse. If you can get yourself to empty the catbox, then a cat. But again, zero maintenance is abuse; if you put the cat outside to excrete, you’re damaging the local bird and small animal population.
Bottom line: NO PETS ARE ZERO MAINTENANCE. Cats and dogs are the lowest maintenance, but even they require some care and vet bills.
If you’re a true slacker, the only possible answer to this thread is a joke answer: a pet rock or a plastic plant.
(I used to tell customers who wanted a pet that was zero maintenance that they should just get a picture of a pet. Personally, I think “taxidermy” was the thread winner.)
Here we go: the Surinam Toad.
Looks dead–in fact, it looks like its been flattened by a truck. They don’t do much except, I assume, eat, sleep, and make little toads. How they do that is an interesting story, but I don’t get the impression the actual act is terribly exciting. Anyway, captive Surinam toads apparently like eating goldfish and nightcrawlers–easy enough to find and drop in the tank.
Just spotted something else that may help sell you on this toad: according to this website, the most often-asked question about these toads is, “Is he dead?”
I thought hipsters were the new slackers. Generational thing.
What about a lichen? It’s not actually a plant, it’s a symbiotic relationship between an alga and a fungus.
What about city rats/country mice? Just leave some easily-accessible peanut butter or similar, and you’ll soon have a small menagerie of relatively self-sufficient “pets.”
On a more serious note, adopting neighborhood stray cats may fit the bill. Keeping food and water out there is a sure-fire way to get them to start coming back and usually learning to trust you. Low need for making sure someone comes over and cleans the box, etc. Cost is minimal – beyond food, a few dollars to spay (to make it “yours,” and that’s it.
I must say, I’ve never heard anyone call a Koala an asshole before.
Ah, good old craptivity.
I’ll give another vote for tarantula as a good choice for a slacker.
Border collie = very bad choice for slacker.