Cockroach Pentecost

Today I brought home two giant African millipedes (not very giant right now; they’re just babies) and an Oklahoma brown tarantula (also tiny – he wants crickets!). They arrived this morning, while I was at work, so I had to run to grab them from the post office after I got home. I got there just as they were closing the doors. In desperation, I rang the buzzer.

A woman popped her head out, and I asked if it was too late for me to pick up my box. She said I’d have to wait until they opened back up. I mentioned that the box contained live animals. One eyebrow shot up – “Live animals?” I nodded. “Two giant african millipedes and a tarantula.” The other eyebrow went up – “I’ll be… right back. We probably shouldn’t hang onto that.” She brought out the box, and I took my babies home.

It’s not every day I get to use arthropods as leverage. It felt good.

Sorry for the slowness on the updates lately. I’m having an I’m-an-idiot crisis. Happens to the best of us.

I started writing this comic because I was bored to tears, and had to have something to think about at work to keep myself sane. The two things I tend to read up about the most online are bugs, and religions. Since those are the two most interesting things to me, I decided to write a story about them.

But I don’t know that much about either one. I’m not an entomologist, or a theologian. I decorate cakes. Those things just interest me.

Realizing how incredibly little I know about bugs, I’ve started reading everything I can about them. I’ve started going out to parks, trying to find as many weird little bugs as I can, and posting pictures of them on invertebrates forums. The more I find, the more I realize I don’t know. And I want to know.

When I started this comic, I thought it would be a good way for me to force myself to learn about arthropods. It’s worked – I feel like I know a lot more than I did when I first started.

But what I know isn’t enough. Most days, I just make myself keep going – the only way to fix this is to learn everything I can! But sometimes I just feel like I have no business writing a story about something I know nothing about. What if people read this thinking that I know what I’m talking about, and I feed them misinformation? Unforgivable!

Regardless, this is my favorite way to learn anything – take the things I know, and put them in a story.

I guess I can’t take this too seriously. They’re man-sized, talking bugs, on fire. I’m just gonna say it’s artistic license and leave it at that.

This is the bloodiest that this comic will ever get. Apologies to the squeamish.

Sorry for the slow updates. I’ve been busy getting my car fixed. I can drive again, finally! I’ve been walking 3 miles to get to work since January. Not fun, but it’s kept me in shape, and I got to rescue a baby snapping turtle the other day (poor thing decided that the middle of the street was a good place to go sunbathing).

The down side of having a working car – yes, there is a down side – is that I’ll get to have a life, finally, and updates might come slower. I’ll try not to have too much of a life. My goal was originally to get this comic finished by the end of the year, but at the rate I’m going, it might be two years… Unacceptable!