SquawkRadio Comments

No, you aren’t alone. I hated having to take care of insects in science class just to see the different stages. Also, disecting in Biology was pretty bad. Luckily for me, we only had to dissect earthworms, but some other classes had cats or fetal pigs.

I do remember that we had animals in Science class in Elementary school. every month we got to pet them and one weekend per month some lucky family got to take a pet home to take care of it. I had no problem with that and loved taking home the turtle (it couldn’t run away from me).

I often wondered: couldn’t we just let the animals be? Granted I’m not a big insect fan, but I don’t want to kill them or watch them slowly die (or kill them to collect them like they do with butterflies).

Oh my gosh, my daughter got that very ant farm as a Christmas gift! It lights up at night! I keep expecting to find illegal plants growing in her room when I tuck her into bed.

Thankfully, almost all of our ants arrived dead. She was heartbroken. I was relieved. Dead ants don’t bite, nor escape the (frequently opened) plastic case and start running amok in the house.

The butterflies are fine with me, though. They all hatched, thankfully, and we took them to the school garden to release them a few days later. It took a few days to convince the proud butterfly owner that butterflies will die if they are not allowed to fly free. The sweetest part is, she still thinks she sees them. She thinks they took up residence in the school garden and are still there, having baby caterpillars like mad.

It’s easy to feel like God when you’ve got very small creatures to lord it over. If you get a dog, you quickly realize that you are not a god, you are just another animal competing for resources (and if those resources include an untended hot dog or peanut butter sandwich on the kitchen table, the dog will get it, not you. Don’t get between the dog and a peanut butter sandwich).

You are a better mother than I, Eloisa.  There is no way I would have allowed that stuff in the house.  I’m scratching right now just reading about the ant thing. Ewwwww!

I do agree that there is something a little twisted about us using other forms of life as learning experiments.  Doesn’t seem quite right.

My son has tried reasoning with me about every single pet he wants to have.  His last and final argument is usually “This will be very educational, Mom!” That never flys with me!

Caroline LOL about the dog!  I totally agree!  And that argument lasted less than 48 hours - “We’ll feed her and walk her and clean up the poop!” Yeah, right!

No, Eloisa, no! I feel your pain and I love this blog! We had an “experiment,” Henrietta, the lightbulb egg that against all odds hatched. What do you do with a chicken (that turns into a rooster) in the suburbs? For the summer all was well, Henrietta lived outside and in the garage. Come winter, Henrietta migrated to the basement where he crowed at all hours because there were no windows in the basement. Finally my mother found a farm that wanted him—at least that’s what she said. Today, I suspect the story played out somewhat differently. I think Mom packed Henrietta in a box, drove out to the country until she spied a farm with chickens in the yard and then hurled old Henrietta out the window as she drove past. Either that or… well, frankly i can’t remember what we had for dinner that night.

And Henrietta was a domestic animal.  You’re so right, Eloisa, so many critters are the hapless victims of Parental Enrichment Programs.

Hi Eloisa,

Been there done that!  Thank goodness most of the kids are grown.  Ant Farms, watching tadpoles grow, butterfly farms.

Our son got to bring home the class hamster one weekend.  It turned into a nightmare with Satan, the evil cat.  My biggest worry was that I was going to have to explain to a bunch of fourth graders that our cat killed their pet.  We managed to keep it alive, but I had to bann the hamster from then on.

We do have a Beta, 2 years now. The cat sits on the barstools and presses his nose against the glass.  I do believe the cat has met his match.  Oh, and the fish has his own mansion with a built-in tropical forest.

Hate to be a wet blanket about this, but it sounds like the red biting ants are part of the invasion of Fire Ants. Since they are not that far north, it is best NOT to import them to an uninfected area. About that frog: “the frog turned out to be banned from the US ecosystem and could not be set free,” and “pet store owner took our frog to breed froglets.” It is illegal to import and/or breed animals that are banned in the US due to the threat to the North American ecosystem.  Anyone wanting exotic pets should be aware of potential environmental hazards should that pet ever escape captivity. 

Laws governing the importation of flora and fauna into this country are set for a reason.  Kudzu in the south and Dutch Elm disease are prime examples.  Accidental importation is bad but to intentionally bring an invasive species into this country for the sole purpose of exotic pet ownership is irresponsible and should not be tolerated.  Illegal activity should be reported to the EPA.

Off my soap box now; sorry if I offended anyone.  Saw ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ this week & though the film didn’t deal with invasive species, I am reminded just how fragile this earth is.

OMG, Eloisa THANK you for posting this! I was going to get that blue ant thing for a resent for my little cousin! No way now. I thought for sure it was a nice place for those ants. UGH! How awful.

Also, We had a monarch butterfly, a wild one we were keeping an eye on outside, the poor thing couldn’t open his wings either. It was so sad.

My uncle bought a gold fish back in the day-and it turned out to be a parana.

Karen H, that is a very good and informative post. Those blue gunk biting ants are def not going to be a b-day present over here~!

What’s this invasion of fire ants about? eeek! My skin is crawling.

Connie… you hard a rooster in your basement? Was this the inspiration for Squawk Radio?

But really? in your basement? Your mom probably found a fabulous place for the rooster. If it was near any kind of farm with other chickens I am sure he thrived.

No, Eloisa, I’m completely with you!!  And this blog just proves what a kind heart you have. 

We have hermit crabs--Daffodil and Lucy.  I thought one of them had died recently as part of it was hanging out of its shell, but we were so relieved to discover the thing had molted--and then we watched it eat its husk (ick, but oh well). 

Now we are in the constant lookout for that perfect shell...in addition to six others already in the expensive planetarium that cost more than 10 hermit crabs. 

And I haven’t had the use of my heating pad since getting them.  Their environment has to always stay above 70 and the planetarium sits right on top of it.

We’re becoming experts, and the thing is, I love them--anything that requires my care to live deserves my love, I think.

For anyone wanting more information about the Fire Ant invasion, check out this Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ants

Since I live in NC, we do have the ants here and they are not nice ants.  They can be agressive and nasty.  The scary part is the recommended control of these ants is biological meaning a certain fly has been imported into the US to help control the ants.  My question is: what happens to the flies when the ants are gone?  Is the ant their sole food source or will they go onto other, less harmful insects?  Let us not forget the Mediterranean Fruit Fly.  Kudzu was brought into the US to help control erosion.  Now most Southern university agriculture programs are trying hard to find a way to iradicate this parasitic vine.

Sorry...ranting again!

Karen H, I’m with you too.  I wish more people were as conscientious.

What Eloisa says is true....we keep thinking we’re Gods and then we have to keep over-compensating for such blatant disrespect of living things.

connie, you know there is a children’s book out there about Henrietta the rooster (or maybe it was a duck?). 

Perhaps Henrietta became a star on that farm and inspired scores of children’s literature with her (his?) sparkling personality.

Fortunately for me, my son didn’t do the ant or butterfly thing, but he did do the turtle thing.  When the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were first popular, he was crazy about them.  He had to have his own turtle, so we tried it with three different turtles, one escaped, one died under his bed and the other died in the basement, all victims of neglect.  I had assumed he was feeding them, which he had assured me he was everytime I asked.

12 years later, and now a college student, you would think the boy would learn some responsibility with his pets.  He volunteered to keep a boa constrictor for a friend last year, which promptly escaped.  The snake was big enough that I knew it couldn’t get under the door, but I still worried about him leaving the door open, the snake escaping.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but he didn’t find the snake either. 3 months later, he decided he wanted to live on campus so I went in to clean up his room.  In one corner, under enough empty coke cans to fill a dump truck, I found one boa constrictor skeleton.  To this day, I can’t figure out how he didn’t notice the smell.

Have any of you ever heard of the snake that ate Guam?  Yes, the brown tree snake did indeed eat Guam--most of its indigenous wildlife, that is.  Now there’s no beautiful tropical birds there… and supposedly you can’t go a few yards without encountering this prolific snake!

As a Biology student in university, I’ve heard countless examples of how fragile ecosystems can be, even to introduced species.  If (illegally) set free, Eloisa’s cute little frog could’ve wreaked havoc on the local insects...potentially starting a nasty chain of events.

Does anyone remember SeaMonkeys?  I always thought they were fun, but much like the fire ants in the box, they weren’t supposed to live long (how sad for an 8 year old!).  Well, they weren’t meant to last long anyway, since I spilled them all over the carpet :(

I have heard about the brown snake of Guam!  *shudders* I think they’re poisonous too!  (I think they also crawl up in airplanes--because they were freaking about them traveling to other countries that way.)

And don’t get me started about African frogs.  One of my co-workers had one at work, and it was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen!  It committed suicide (lept free of it’s aquarium while we were gone one weekend, dried out, and poof! gone.) But she had entertained the notion of setting it free until she found out it was illegal to do so!

The only science project I have going right now are the mutant dust bunnies growing under my bed.

Holy smokes, people! Do NOT get a fireant farm. Fireants are widespread over the South (they came in in WWII) and I personally can’t decide if I’d be happier having them die a slow death on your counter or happier if you put the container in the snow and froze the little $#@%s. 

Do they bite? Oh, yes. And inject a poison in you. And swarm. If your kid takes off the lid or if you knock the farm off the counter, you are going to have the biggest mess you can imagine. A huge number of people (ME!) are allergic to the bites. I swell up, have to take benedryl, and the bites itch horribly. The swelling, even with benedryl, doesn’t go down for a week. Other people are much, much more allergic. And with their tendency to swarm, you can get bit a LOT before you’re able to get away and brush them off. You truly do not want these little beasts to get into your yard. Right now they seem unable to survive in desert or extreme cold, but they adapt rapidly to changing conditions.

Okay, there’s my rant for the morning. ACK! Fireants. ::Shudder::

Sorry, Xtina, but LMAO!! You really need to put a scene like that in a book.

We don’t do so good with small animals. We had Louie the lizard who died of severe dehydration when Anthony went away for the week end and someone *cough* me *cough* forgot to spritz him with water. Shhhh, Anthony still doesn’t know it was me. He thinks poor Louie was just old. Not to mention you had to feed Louie live crickets. ewww.
Then there was the hamster, gerbil thing. That was actually kind of cute. When you’d walk by her tank she’d stand on her hind legs and beg to be taken out. She loved to walk all over you and visit. After you got over the icky rodent factor she was pretty neat. Sadly, she got a big ole tumor and died:(
Then there was Pricilla the parakeet. She started out as Elvis until we figured out it was a girl. She lived a few years until Anthony stepped on her one day:( We all cried buckets, even Precious (the dog).

If anyone would like to do an experiment with a cat on how to make them nicer I’ll gladly send you Sherrif. He’s really....sweet? *ahem* anyone?? anyone??

Teresa, do your dust bunnies resemble the dust bunnies from Jane Castle’s (Krentz) books HARMONY and AFTER GLOW? 

I kinda liked them.

I just don’t seem to enjoy owning pets.  I’m not quite sure what joy other ppl get out of it but to me, it’s just one more thing I have to clean up after.

In my high school biology classroom, our teacher had cages of creepy stuff all along the back wall.  Giant glass cases of rats, hamsters, snakes, and even an owl.  I am terrifed of both rodents and birds so this was just such a great learning environment for me.  *shudder* He used to FEED the gerbils and the rats to the snake and the owl.  Before first period.  Once a week.  So that his first two periods could listen to the terrified animals screaming.  Oh yeah, great learning experience.  I still have nightmares.  I had the class first period and my assigned seat was in the back.

We had to dissect a rat, a crab, a fetal pig, a worm, a fish, and a frog.  I refused.  I’m allergic to formaldehyde and to animal cruelty.  I was a girl with large bosoms so I was allowed an out without losing my GPA.  Bit of a jerk that guy.

heh, my word is ‘corps’ ..needs an ‘e’...

Ah, avoid fireants at all costs.  We used to try to burn them out of our backyard but there are millions of them in the nest and it can go down 8 feet or so.  MILLIONS of them.

My brother accidentally stepped in a nest once when he was wearing spiderman footed jammies.  They swarmed.  He had hundreds of bites all over his body.  Now he’s allergic to lots of things he wasn’t allergic to before.  It was terrifying. I can still hear him screaming. 

My mom stepped in a nest once and got bit so many times her ankles swelled up like an elephants’.  She still has little white scars from the bites.

*shudder* They are about the only thing I don’t miss about Texas.  Well that and banana spiders.  Walked into a web once.  The spider is bright yellow and its body is about 2 inches long.  Luckily I’m not scared of spiders. 

I don’t know, Prudence!  I must put both of those on my reading list because I love Jayne! 

Does anyone know how long a mutant dust bunny can live in captivity?  I finally broke down this week and dusted the furniture for the first time since the New Year.  But I noticed the dust was starting to form little tumbleweeds and believe if I’d have waited another week, I could have just BLOWN them off the furniture with the leaf blower.

Note to self.  Send Xtina fire ant farm next Christmas.

We’ve been through 3 hamsters, several fish, 3 cats, and now dogs.  We’ve also had caterpillers in captivity that turned in to butterflies.  I have a really hard time with the captivity thing, too.  I was very happy to let the butterflies go free.  We’ve had lots of wildlife the past year or so - baby squirrel, baby opossums, baby bird, duck and 9 ducklings, baby rat - all in our yard.  We took the baby squirrel, opossums and bird to wildlife rehabiliators.  We put the duck and babies in our dog crate and drove them down to the water (I live in a busy suburban area.) I couldn’t even kill the dumb rat.  It ran off into my yard somewhere, probably now 2 feet long and with bubonic plague or something.

Connie, my brother had a chicken as a pet in his suburban California home for several years.  I still don’t know why.

A fireant allergy killed someone locally.  Be careful, all of you that are allergic to them!

Note to self. Search and destroy Teresa’s Russell Crowe photo file.

I never had any kind of ant farm, but last spring I discovered a real ant colony in one of my garden beds.  I started digging to plant some herbs and turned up a bunch of ants.  It was actually pretty cool - I could see some of the tunnels and stuff and the larvae.  As a bit of a science geek, I was fascinated, but I felt bad about disturbing their home (these aren’t fire ants, just regular black ants) and moved my herbs a little bit. 

Oh, the good old days of dissection in science class.  I got to do frogs and fetal pigs and cats.  The cats were ones that were destroyed at a shelter, so I didn’t feel too bad about dissecting them. 

The worst thing we dissected, though, were freshly killed rats.  Literally killed minutes before we cut into them.  Not only did I not like the somewhat pointless killing, they smelled really really bad.  Formaldahyde isn’t nearly as bad as the fresh innards of a rat combined with ether.  Ugh!

My verification code is work21 - guess that means I should get back to work, since I’m in the office, doesn’t it?

this is not going to be at all eloquent, but

EWWWWWW

frogs, ants, insects...as pets???

EWWWWW

Note to self:  Lock Russell Crowe Photo File in safe guarded by Deadly Mutant Fireants.

My mom told me this story about when I was in kindergarten (I really don’t remember this myself, but my mom laughs about it still to this day)

Apparently, we had a pet bunny in class, and every Friday one student from our class got to bring it home to care for it over the weekend.

Well, one week we got a new student, so the next weekend the teacher decided that it woudl be her weekend to bring the bunny home.

That Friday afternoon, as always, the teacher would drive the student home, so that she could bring the bunny, cage, food, etc., then she would return on Monday morning and drive the child to school, again, in order to bring all the bunny stuff back.

Monday rolled around, and apparently when my teacher got to the front steps of the student’s home that morning, her parents came out with their arms wide open to say thank you to the teacher.

...

They didn’t speak any english, and seemed to have misunderstood what was supposed to be happening with the rabbit. when their daughter came home with a rabbit on Friday afternoon, they thought that it was a gift to welcome them to the neighbourhood.

They ate it.

*LOL* OMG.

OMG Billie!! eeeeeeeeeeeeew. a skeleton?? How did he sleep @ night not knowing where the thing was? ahhhh…

Ummm banana spiders???

And 8 feet of ants?????

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My skin is crawling so bad. I’m not going to read anymore tonight hahah. I will post about all of my bad dreams tomorrow morning, though… haha..

Also, KC, I am dying over here. That is the funniest story ever!

of course except for the morbidity of it all being a class pet… and so on…

Hi all,

Back from an exciting day at the university… I just checked out the ants (don’t worry! I’m not letting them out!).  They’ve established a little cemetery in the bottom left of their box.  It’s the saddest thing.  I don’t know if they go there to die, or they take the dead bodies there.

Eloisa

While I am struck by the cruel waste of the lives of one small colony of biting red ants for the vital purpose of giving a child something to stare at besides Nickelodeon for ten minutes, I have to admit that, were the ants in some natural environment… my backyard, for instance, they would still be shuffling their dead off to some small unmarked graveyard because Pestmaster comes the first Thursday of the month and I have two little ones that love to run without looking at what they are stepping in.
I am one of the lucky ones. When I’m bitten by a fire ant it only takes two weeks for the blister to heal and another two weeks for the mark to start fading.

As anyone, including myself can attest to, the only good fire ant is a DEAD fire ant!!!  Personally, I prefer the lighter fluid soaked mound and blowtorch igniter method of getting rid of fire ant mounds in the yard!!

When I was a kid, I had a series of hamsters. One used to get free all the time, and he would take food with him in his cheeks for his escape attempt, unerringly locate the guitar I was learning to play, get inside, and ‘hide’ his food. I was always going to my lessons and listening to the food rattling around in there. (That’s why I can’t play...yeah, that must be it.)

Another time one got loose, and my mother woke up in the middle of the night, lying on her back with the hamster sitting up on her chest, staring at her. I still remember that scream…