It feels very odd to call live animals artifacts, but these 4 Madagascar hissing cockroaches have made such a lasting impact on my life that it would be wrong not to include them here.
For my 17th birthday, I spontaneously decided that I wanted hissing cockroaches as pets, so I ordered four of them on Amazon. They arrived on September 23, 2017 (1 day after my birthday) in not the best condition; their box had no indication of containing live animals, and their only insulation was newspaper. I’m very well aware of how odd it sounds, but it was love at first sight. I ended up naming them Pierre, Portia, Wendy, and Finn.
Unfortunately, only Wendy is still alive today, and is about 2 years old. Although the other 3 weren’t around for longer than a year or two, they inspired me to major in entomology. These 4 roaches were more than just gross bugs to me; they were pets, and they were family.