The original Vince and Howard. Not stick insects.
I like animals. But even I have to admit that I have bitten off more than I can chew with the latest critters I have allowed to share my home. Let’s be clear on one thing- more than ten of anything is creepy. One kitten-lovely; two kittens-adorable; three kittens-hilariously wonderful. 100 kittens: Hitchcock eerie.
Here’s a quick run down of the animals in my house. First off there’s my friend and yours, Sonny the Black Menace: professional spaniel. Then there’s two gorgeous twin cat girls who make the twin combo of the Cheeky Girls look like the pile of steaming badger shit they actually are. They are called Libby and Lulu and they want to make the world a better place by promoting world peace-except where spaniels are concerned.
As if that weren’t enough last year I embraced the company of four baby stick insects. We called them Bollo,Vince, Howard and Harrison, after our favourite characters in the TV show The Mighty Boosh. Harrison was the biggest of them and consequently boss of the tank. He was King Silverback Stickie and was feared and respected by all who knew him. That assumption was my first mistake. Little did I realise before hitting Stickipedia that pretty much all stick insects are female. And get this, they don’t need bloke insects to make tiny baby insects. They are living the Germaine Greer, feminist utopian vida loca, those girls. Before we knew it we had a batch of tiny stickettes- about 70 of them. They could squeeze their tiny frames through the vents in the tank and pretty much every morning I had to rescue about ten of them from the kitchen ceiling every morning.
As soon as the babies arrived, my kids lost interest in their twiggy friends for, let's face it, they were more pestilence than pets so you can't really blame them. As I say, too many of anything is creepy. Too many of anything which is creepy even in the singular is like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and we are all acting hysterically (not to say badly) like Kate Capshaw and needing a slap across the face to pull ourselves together.
So now we’ve two tanks full of adult stick insects and by my watch they are due to give birth any week now. Now I’m no mathematician but if three original adults (Bollo died of a sore throat early on and was never to experience the joys of motherhood) could produce seventy kids, then give or take a few casualties (mainly ceiling dwellers than accidentally got squished) how many sticklings are 60 adults going to produce.
In summary: loving, house-trained stick insects free to good home. Apply within.
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