Clarence is dead! Between 11:00pm yesterday and 11:27pm tonight, Clarence has kicked the bucket. Last night he was on his back but, however, was still responsive (eg; he would move when I tapped the container). It’s really weird how insects always die on their backs. It’s like they are waving a white flag to any predators which might stumble across this fine cuisine dish. Wait a minute! Clarence could be tricking me! Nah, we have been like friends over these past few months together, and friends never do such things as that! Why did I even think of that?

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This is simply astounding. Clarence lives on! Although I do wish he would fade away from this world - this would mean I could stop typing these silly blog entries about him. Which raises a new question - Is Clarence a male or a female cockroach?

Count the segments on the ventral surface of the male and female abdomen. The number of visible segments is higher in the male than the female. Also the females posterior abdomen is broader and more rounded than the male.

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I’ve lost track of how many weeks Clarence has been alive for, in captivity in my ‘Discovery Tube’ tube - in fact I only remember one out of every two days that he still lives. He doesn’t want to seem to die. His movements are quite slow now, and he always sits on the bottom of the tube (as it is positioned in an up-right fashion). Put yourself in Clarence’s situation; oh, how boring it would be to live in a ‘Discovery Tube’ amongst the many pieces of your own poo.

The last time I caught a cockroach, I too did an experiment. I have heard many-a-times that cockroaches can survive after being frozen for a few hours. And so that, I did. I placed the cockroach in the freezer for approximately 2.453671957236 hours and then placed the jar in the sun so that it would resurrect itself from the dead. I then waited. And waited so did I, for about 4 hours. By this time I had forgotten about it, the sun had set, and still remained dead did the cockroach. I think that was a special anti-freeze species of cockroach.

Let’s hope Clarence is equipped with anti-freeze to see him through the winter days. Goodnight children, goodnight.

So, how’re you people doing this week? Good? Well, Clarence is doing fine. I won’t take any photos this week as he looks the same, but the activity of his antennae has decreased. His left antennae is bent and his movements are extremely sluggish. Right now he is climbing up the tube vertically. Oh, he says “Hi!”. He’s going back down now. Treasure that greeting, as I have a feeling that it’s his last in this life as a cockroach. He has done 3 poos - one really large one, one medium sized one, and one small one. He seems much more active now. He keeps on looking at me. And moving about - maybe it’s just because he is getting energy from my Lighting Direct Desk lamp. Or maybe it’s trying to convey to me through this plastic tubing that he loves me?

Tune in next week to see if Clarence survives the next few freezing days.

Meet Clarence the roach. Clarence says hi. On the 16th of May 2007 at approximately 9:30pm, I caught this big guy in my house. Since then it has been residing in a “Discovery Tube”.

He is well. He has eaten half an insect which I had earlier caught - good, he’s hungry, that’s a good sign of a lasting life. Clarence has also done one poo, featured in one of the pictures. It is rather large in comparison to it’s body. Clarence continually wriggles it’s antennae to feel it’s surroundings. He has many spikes on his back legs. He is brown, with transparent pieces of shell on either side of him. His eyes look funny.

Each week, I will bring you photos and updates of Clarence until the day he dies. Keep an eye out, this will be the centre-of-attention on this site for many weeks to come.

Update: Clarence’s life coverage may be cut short due to dad suggesting to throw Clarence out early as cockroaches cause a staining stench after a while. I had forgotten about this. Now I remember the smell of them, from the visits to the cockroach enclosure at Auckland Museum.

I laugh at NZ Herald’s feeble attempt the copy Trademe’s navigation bar thing. Looks shoddy, and you can no-doubtly tell it is an attempt to mimic - they even used Wises as a link to a map site as an alternative to Trademe’s recently released Smaps site.

I also found an error in Trademe’s bar. The last listing option mouse-overs to an orange colour, but the other ones don’t. I emailed them - I hope I get credit for being such a good spotter-er, like money credited to my Trademe account.