As some of you may know, we have a hamster, a fish and a snail here in CZ. Once the relocation was confirmed, one of the many things I had to think about was what would happen to them. Of course, we grew to love them, so I decided to check out the ways of taking them with us.

Initially, we thought that, if we move, our things would be moved to UK by car (that’s how we moved our things from UK to Germany about 8 years ago). However, the company is going to arrange the shipment by air and they have ‘no pets’ policy. First of all, I checked BA rules for flying with pets – I can’t take them into cabin with me, so they can only go to a special luggage compartment. I can’t hand them in there myself as well, instead I should contact a pet relocation company. I contacted two of them – one suggest by BA, another one is a local CZ company I found on Internet. I asked both of them to quote me how much it would cost to send a hamster, a fish and a snail (or just a hamster and a snail) from Prague to London. The quotations were pretty close in numbers. How much? Approximately 500USD. Seriously. No joking here. I mean, if it was a dog, we would, of course, have to pay anything to take it with us, but a fish? Or a hamster? I’m not even sure how much they care, who gives them food.

The hard part was to discuss this issue with our older daughter. I explained, how hard it is to send the pets by air and discussed with her what we could do. She readily proposed that we should give a hamster to two of her friends in the kindergarten. Now, as the two girls do not share a home, we decided to ask the kindergarten, whether they would take our hamster – they already have two guinea pigs there and they seem to take pretty good care of them. The kindergarten agreed and the hamster was transported with all the possible honours to its new home. We were sad, but I hope it would be a good home at least.

The fish also found a new owner. A Czech family that we know here already has a large aquarium at home and their daughter was more than happy to take home a small aquarium with our beta fighter fish. As her parents are experienced in taking care of fish, I also hope that it would have a good life with them.

Last, but not at all the least – our Xena, the Princess Warrior. The African snail. I cannot take it with me on a plane, nor am I prepared to spend 500USD for shipping it.. I contacted a couple of snail breeders in UK and asked them how they ship their snails (they should somehow send them to their clients all over the country). They were actually shocked by the relocation prices, and answered that they just post the snails, using regular mail services. Just put them in a box with some holes and that should be good. I have a couple of issues with it: 1) how gently would the parcel be handled? seriously don’t want to receive a dead snail 2) it is allowed to mail them in UK, but what about a snail in a box crossing EU-UK border? I just can’t decide :( I want to take a snail, but I’m also worried about the available means of transport. What would you do?