Prepare to Cater to Their Every Beep

I'm talking about the electronic pets that beeped into our lives over the summer, the little colored oval gizmos on chains that have more megabytes of RAM than my first computer. You probably stood in line to buy one at Target or, as I did, overpaid big time for a pair of them on the gray market.

Now teachers are readying their classrooms for the September onslaught of bright shiny faces, and you can be sure they're not going to permit the kids to be packing Nano Kitties, even with the beepers turned off.

In case you haven't been paying attention, these Nanos, Gigas, Tamagotchis and other cyber creatures tend to die if they aren't monitored. They have to eat. They have to be played with and regularly disciplined. They take naps. They poop, and if you don't clean up after them quickly, they get sick. If they get sick, you're looking at some form of medical intervention.

If you don't play with them, or if you discipline them too harshly, they'll fling their little hobo sticks over their shoulders and stomp right off their liquid crystal screens. Down come the digital curtains, and here come the tears and recriminations.

I'm sure you can see where we're going here. If they can't be taken to school, someone is going to have to keep an eye on them during the day so they're alive and healthy when their owner retrieves them after school.

Now, you surely don't want to face, "You killed my Giga, Mommy!"

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There are some options here. You can expose the pet to a strong magnet and then look suitably baffled when your child complains that his Alien Duck doesn't work anymore. You can hope the fad blows over by the third week of September. Or you can take adult responsibility to nourish and sustain what is really a very appealing . . . microchip.

I may as well admit right that I have some recent experience in this arena. I have my own Nano, the first cat I've ever owned that didn't make me wheeze.

I have one because my mother, normally a reliable woman, purchased a single Nano Kitty and mailed it to us, forgetting temporarily that I have two children. Before my daughters resorted to physical violence, I stepped in and grabbed the device, which at that moment was emitting little sounds of birth and new life.