Yep. It is indeed easy to ruin a FET with minuscule amount of static charge. That is, unless there is a zener (or two, back-to-back) connecting gate to source. Many modern FETs have this built right in. E.g. ATP214 [1].
Do you know of anything available like that?
Surface mount only (like most modern transistors), but SOT-23 isn't too hard to hand solder. There are lots of breakout boards for surface mount packages available for prototyping, or you could even solder some mod wire directly to each pin and put some hot melt glue on it to keep it in place.