We’re staying close enough to the Reid Park zoo that we can walk and we bought an annual pass so we’ve been going a lot. The zoo is really awesome. The new elephant exhibit is cool as are the monkeys, the lion family and giraffes but what is really neat is the educational building with the cockroachs. They have 100 or so of these big guys in a case highlighting their composting efforts. They are decomposers as well as scavengers. They eat everything and are therefore omnivoires. They’ve been around for 300 million years and seem to have a bad rap but some people keep them as pets. Awesome!

Other decomposers include worms, millipedes, mites, bacteria and fungi. These guys help to break down the compost pile and heat it up. The world would be a pretty trashy place without these important decomposers so high five to Mr. Cockroach, the compost rock star, for being so awesome and for helping to green our beautiful planet Earth.