Thinking on it, I was never that good with pets as a kid. Never had one die on me out of neglect IIRC, but. . .nah.
My main sin as a teenager was just being too scared to watch my cat die and having them live their last couple of years isolated in another room away from me when they loved me. I feel remorseful about doing it now that I've gradually gained more perspective, but I have serious issues to this day with being scared of loss. But during my happier years with the cat, I did legit try my best with her even when she did eat my books, nearly sit on my face at night, and make the smell in my room unbearable.
I had freshwater fish towards the end of it that I treated well enough too, freshwater fish like to die a lot but it wasn't lack of care so much as the house's water being harder than they liked. A couple survived a good long time and got handed off to someone else when I finally was done having a tank. The lack of commitment to emotion makes me kind of miss fish, but my mother isn't up for another round of it and in the event I have my own place to put a tank in someday I'm using an ELECTRIC cleaning vacuum. I'm still upset I took a mouthful of fish poo water one time.
Before that, though. . .
The gerbil got it the worst from me. That one had it's own awful tail incident courtesy of my then Chris-Chan Darla idiocy, but it survived with only a slightly shorter tail to speak for it. Then it went from being a lone gerbil to Gerbil of Thrones. Gave birth to a bunch of babies, ate all but one, the survivor grew up into an albino (mom was brown), then mom got pregnant again. . .and ate all the babies again. . .
Sometimes I look back and wonder if the dog growing up to be a hellhound was my fault, but my parents insist it wasn't. Still, I do wonder sometimes. Did back then, and still do. I can still see the patching we had to do to the wall after it decided it wanted to eat drywall.
I teetered back and forth between being good with wild animals and being awful. I feel kind of bad for bringing a mantis home without knowing how to care for it, though. Mostly just because of this, except instead of dropping it I just kept it indoors during the wrong time of year:
http://animalcrossing.wikia.com/wiki/Blathers
They didn't fly, though, just escape the plastic insect box while I wasn't in the room and get pathetically stuck in the carpet en masse.
The hermit crab I hardly remember how I cared for, but I don't remember being bad with it. But I had it at the same time as the cat and fish tank, so of course I would be better then.
And I never took care of them, but my mother liked ferrets. They're honestly adorable, and nothing bad ever happened there, either. They WILL try to get into everything, though. They bound around hilariously and make these little hoonka-hoonka sounds. The fact that they're illegal in some states is honestly kind of insane. One time when I was really young I went to a Halloween contest at a library and dressed up as Tigger while having the ferret fill in as a Woozle. . .Mostly I'm just thinking of how cute ferrets are, now. . .
. . .This really just turned into pet confessions.
I've never had a bird or reptile, though, and I do like both. I also know both would be high maintenance, though.
Apparently there's only a couple of reptiles that like being petted and one of them is Monitor Lizards. I would say "I'm OK with that!," but aside from that probably at minimum needing a license where I live that's just an invitation to get something bitten off. At least it wouldn't be as crazy as keeping a gator, which apparently some of my extended family ACTUALLY DID AT ONE POINT. I mean really no. I'll keep my unrealistic fantasy pet ideas to things that potentially like petting and can only horribly mutilate me.