Recent Animal Encounters

The last of our *original* Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches died this past week. We had four originals, then about thirty offspring...now we're down to two. She was upside down one day, and I turned her back over and told Daddy, "Watch. She'll be dead in a couple days, because when they flip over and can't get back up they're dying." She did die in a couple days, but what I want to talk about was what happened before she died.

I was cleaning the cage, and I thought she was already dead, but when I picked her up she moved her antennae just a little, so I put her back in. The next morning one of the younger ones had come to sit with her, and it sat with her most of the day, until she died, then it went back into the tube.

How sweet was that! It burns me up to think of people using Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches for "Fear Factorish" sorts of things! These are living creatures with feelings for heaven's sake!

The second animal happening was yesterday. We were going down the road, and passed a squirrel. At first we thought it was roadkill, but as we went past it's tail moved. We didn't want it to suffer, so we went back to, as Daddy put it, put it out of it's misery. When we got back, though, it moved a bit more, so I got out to check on it. I took a magazine with me for protection ("I am a crazy, rabid squirrel, and I WANT MY COOKIES!") and when I got to it there was no blood or anything, so I scooted him up on the grass in the middle of the road and waited while some cars and an ambulance went past (must have looked really odd...lol). When the road was clear again I picked him up with his scruff and slid the magazine under him and carried him to the other side of the road where trees were, and after a second he hopped off the magazine and disappeared into the brush.

I was SO glad we went back to help him! He apparently hadn't been hit, was only scared and didn't know which way to go. It made my day happier, having saved a squirrel. ; )