Think of the grossest thing you’ve ever experienced. That truly disgusting thing, the one thing you base every other gross thing on - did it involve rotting cockroaches dung? How about discarded cockroach fetuses? And did it involve your mouth? What about your tastebuds?
You see, I just hit my “gross” limit and yes, it involved all of those things.
Now before I begin, I should tell you that I love insects. They’ve fascinated me as a child and now as an adult I keep Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, I won’t bore you with specifics but the basics are giant nocturnal, mild mannered, vegetarian Cockroaches from the island of Madagascar. Whose only defense in life is Hissing.
What started out as normal tank (terrarium) cleaning turned into a nightmare! Jim and I were counting the roaches, separating the newly hatched males from the females and cleaning up the tanks. It usually takes about an hour and each of us know our jobs, Jim handles the roaches and separates them. I keep count and do the actual cleaning. We were running late this time, usually we do this once a month. But due to life, we were about two weeks behind. We bought extra substrate and planned to spend some extra time on the cleaning part.
We had finished the males terrarium, we have 42 males and it was 15 minutes into the female tank when we started to run into trouble. We were up to 30 females when we realized the females were all hiding in this one ceramic tree, we have a couple of these “trees” in each tank. Madagascar Hissing cockroaches spend a large part of their time hiding, so we like to give them apt place to go. Back to the story, the females were so crammed into this tree that they couldn’t move. We tried taking one out at a time, they weren’t budging! We sprayed some water into the holes in ceramic in hopes that the hissers would lose their grip, one by one the roaches started to fall out and we sighed a breath of relief.
We had a lot to go through, so we worked it out that I was to hold onto the tree, shake it a little and Jim would catch them and move them to their new tank. It was slow going but we were getting thru it. It finally was at the point when the only roaches left in the tree were REALLY stuck in their, the way the tree was set up was it has hollowed ceramic branches that the roaches would hide in. Great for hiding roaches, horrible for the people trying to get them out.
Spraying more water wasn’t doing anything but cleaning out the tree of roach shells, rotting ootheca (roach abortion) and old wet poop
gently shaking the roaches out wasn’t working. I was getting tired and frustratedZ
I finally took a deep breath and as I exhaled I shook it REALLY hard - it cracked! Not only did it crack, but a piece of the tree broke in half. Petrified roach poop, shells and old oothicas splattered on the wall! It Dripped on The floor! And landed on my face! And fell in my mouth. I couldn’t close my mouth fast enough. There wasn’t even any roaches.
It was the grossest thing I have EVER experienced! Actually that might be an understatement. I gagged, I washed my face and cleaned out my mouth.
Jim didn’t say a word. We finished cleaning up in silence. I took a shower and declined dinner.
To say that I am done for the day might also be an understatement.
