6: All Creatures Great and Not So Great

Would you like some tips on keeping cockroaches as pets? How about 24-hour-a-day access to a colony of naked mole-rats? Perhaps you'd like to know what kind of tricks you can teach a Sea Monkey? If so, you've come to the right place.

In this chapter we take a look at our animal friends, including:

• Cockroach World
• The Banana Slug Home Page
• The Sea Monkey Worship Page
• The National Zoo's Naked Mole-Rat Colony Cam
• Talk to My Cat
• Wave to the Cats
• Mummify your cat at Summum Mummification
• The Exploding Whale Page

Cockroach World

It has 18 knees and a skeleton on the outside of its body. It's hard to kill: it can live up to a month without food; it can survive in temperatures as low as 32 degrees Fahrenheit; its body contains a white, fatty substance that absorbs and neutralizes poisons; it will live for a week even if you chop off its head! A monster from a low-budget horror movie? Nope. We're talking about a creature that is probably living under your refrigerator right now: the cockroach. If you're hankering to learn more about cockroaches, there's no better place than Cockroach World.

No boring entomological site this, Cockroach World is a multimedia extravaganza that includes sound files of hissing roaches, movies of roaches that spit on you and emit a foul odor, and photos of some of the 5,000 roach species found worldwide. If you're enamored of the little fellows, you'll enjoy the instructive section on catching roaches and keeping them as pets. If you're normal, you'll enjoy the section on killing them with boric acid.

Your hostess, entomologist Dr. Betty Faber (aka "The Bug Lady") narrates the audio and video clips and answers the Web-surfing public's roach-related questions. When we looked in, the question of the week was: "Can I get rid of cockroaches using natural predators?" Betty replies that "centipedes, spiders, scorpions, lizards, tarantulas, rats, and mice all like to eat cockroaches."

We can only surmise that next week's question will be: "How do I get rid of all the centipedes, spiders, scorpions, lizards, tarantulas, rats, and mice in my house?"

Exploding Whale

Question: What do you do when you have an 8-ton whale carcass on your beach?

Answer: Call the Oregon State Highway Division (assuming you're in Oregon, that is -- we can't help you with dead whales in other states).

Answer upon further reflection: Well, maybe you shouldn't call the Oregon State Highway Division after all. You can see their whale-carcass-removal handiwork at the Exploding Whale Page, which includes digital video of a TV newscaster reporting a grisly incident involving an 8-ton dead whale, a half ton of dynamite, and the Highway Division.

Oregon, it seems, does not have a Dead Behemoth Removal Division, so the Highway Division was called in to dispose of a rather ripe whale that had washed up on the beach near the town of Florence. The plan -- which sounded pretty good in theory -- was to blow the whale into thousands of little blubber bits, which would then be consumed by seagulls, crabs, and other creatures unconcerned about their daily fat intake. Well, it started off well enough, with a colossal explosion and riotous cheers from the spectators.

The spectators changed their tune, however, when whale chunks large enough to flatten a Buick (which one did) began raining down in their midst. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but everyone within a quarter mile of the blast was spattered with rotting whale gore. Most were not amused. You will be, though, when you visit this site.