Something I Bet You Didn’t Know

I am a mean mother who won’t buy my sons a dog. Part of the reason is that I’m just not a dog person. But most of the reason is that I don’t want to take care of a dog. I have three seven-year-olds. I feel my plate is plenty full.

I will, however, care for a Betta fish and six Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. All stay confined to glass enclosures, and all require next-to-nil care. Plus, all are very surprising to me. I mean, did you know that when cockroaches molt, they don’t leave behind a thin layer of white skin like snakes do? Well trust me, they don’t. We found that out recently when one of the cockroaches molted for the first time. My son ran around the house with what looked like a dead cockroach in his hand, waving the brown husky thing and yelling, “Look! It’s the skin! It’s the skin.”

As perhaps you are doing now, I tottered on the brink of full gross-out because it’s one thing to have your son hold live cockroaches, but it’s another thing altogether to have him thrusting a dead one at your face so that you can have a close-up view. I tried to point out the error of his ways (as I pushed his hand away) by telling him that the white molted skin was in the cage and that he was holding a nasty dead thing, but then the white molted skin in the cage moved. I very quickly moved, too, in an upward direction I might call a jump if I were in any way inclined to admit that a bug could make me jump. My son instructed me to look online for verification of his claims and, sure enough, right there on the screen was Cockroach Fun Fact #5: Cockroaches crawl out of their old skin and are then whitish in color for approximately 8 hours, at which time they once again sally forth in all their brown glory. Only bigger.

So there you have it. Your cockroach knowledge has been expanded with one simple post from the Halverson Family. This could not have happened had I relented and bought my sons a dog. Everyone knows everything about dogs. Fewer are the people who know about molting cockroaches. You can now count yourself among them.

You’re welcome.