Solemn Times in The Wild

On April 23, 2009, we posted the following message:

"It is with heavy hearts that we send along to you the sad news of the passing of Louise Wild, our friend and half of our famous Wild hissing cockroach duo. When we arrived in the Wild this morning, we found Louise had passed peacefully, on her back, in her sleep, during the night. Her partner and habitat mate of eight months, Thelma, survives. Louise is lying in state through Friday in The Wild. In lieu of flowers, please share a book with a child today. Louise would have wanted it that way."

Since that solemn day, we have experienced numerous ups and downs in The Wild. It seems many of our animals have struggled with the mourning process, each dealing with it in his or her own unique way. Toad, half of our fire-bellied toad couple Toad & Toad, stopped eating. He grew weak and simply sat, thinking, for days. He let himself go, refusing to bathe, even. We carefully rinsed him with warm water and talked through the grief until he began to regain his strenth. He is not 100%, but we are hopeful that he has turned a corner.

Bunnicula Dewey Booklet, the four-year-old rabbit who has called The Wild home for three years now, began a spontaneous molt. He has lost enough hair to knit a sweater. Fortunately, he appears to be nearly through the process and with the addition of extra fiber and papaya to his diet, hairballs haven't been cause for alarm.

Unfortunately, the outcome for Elvis, our giant suckerfish, was not was not so positive. Elvis came to us in April 2006, in a tank of reject fish someone had decided they no longer wanted. One by one, the motley school passed on to the big tank-in-the-sky. But not Elvis; he hung in there. We added a school of nine little mollies for him to play with. Over time, they were each called Home too. Elvis didn't let it get to him. He kept a stiff upper sucker and continued his dedicated fight against algae overgrowth. Louise's passing, however, was more than he could bear. On May 29th, he went belly-up, alone in his tank.

Feeling like you, our loyal Wild family, might think we were using the deaths of our beloved pets as cheap publicity opportunities, we decided to let Elvis's passing go unannounced. Until now. You see, yesterday we cleaned out his tank, too sad to fill it with with new fish. Instead, we dried the tank and lined it with fresh bedding. We made a little teepee of sticks and hot glue, intending to move Louise's partner Thelma into the Park Avenue of hissing cockroach habitats.

Thelma had been silent since Louise's passing. When we tried to move her, she dug her little legs in and held tight to her old bark as if to say, "just go, please, just go." We explained that a fresh start in a new place would be good for her. She hissed. It was her first hiss in weeks. We told her good-night as we closed the store for the evening.

The next morning, we checked on her first thing. She was gone. Not dead, just gone. We spent the majority of the morning looking for her. We brought in more people to search. We fanned out and tried to think like Thelma. Where would a grieving, angry, depressed hissing cockroach go to get away?

It is time to close the shop for the night and we still haven't found her.

It's possible that when we arrive home tonight, we will find her atop the flowerbed grave of Louise, just like the ending to her favorite book: Where the Red Fern Grows. It would be no surprise to us if she spent the entire day making the two-block trek to rest in peace next to her soulmate.

But if you see her, please call us. Even if she doesn't want to come home, we just want to know that she is okay. She left wearing nothing but her shell. She is a beautiful deep, golden-brown; approximately 2 inches in length and about half an inch tall when she's on the move.

As for Pages, it's all good.