A Ladybug Casket

Pet Sanctions

Lots of grown-ups have a need for a pet – a pet with ten legs, a pet with no legs whatsoever, or a pet with feathers with which one can share a comb, a meal or a thought. Children however, always have a need for a pet. But their wishes, quiet often, are not something that their parents want to fulfill.
So after a lot of begging, and the long conversation that ends with dogs, cats and hamster sanctions, kids simply have to be inventive which leads us to a simple question.

Isn’t an insect a perfect “illegal” pet?

Insects are easy to find (and to catch!), also, it is not a problem to place them in a small, secret place far from the eyes of a mean parent. They tend to be very interesting to observe, in their almost extraterrestrial shapes, and extraordinary movements. However, there is another side of that medal – kids are easily attached to their pets, and a life span of an insect can’t be nearly as long, as a proud owner would like it to be. They are also quiet sensitive, so their peaceful life can be abruptly shortened unpremeditated. If not discovered in time, it can also lead to some serious damage.

The Dead Bug Funeral Kit

Maybe that sincere pain of loosing an insect pet was an inspiration for David Barringer, a writer and designer from North Caroline, who made a very unusual set. “The Dead Bug Funeral Kit” contains a miniature coffin, a paper roll with instructions how to conduct a funeral, a clay flower, and a grass seed for the grave. Everything is designed and crafted quiet neatly. The most interesting element in this kit might be a hand-made “Boogy Book Of Eulogies” with posthumous poems about most common insects like butterflies, crickets, ladybugs etc. These poems are full of moments of innocent fascination with these strange creatures. This strange project is interesting in it’s miniature-morbid sort of way, but it still leaves a feeling of an undefined discomfort while it is transferring the most moving of all the human rituals, to the world of being so distant from ours. Maybe it is because of the feeling of essential distance of the author towards the fact that kids really are sad for the loss of something so small and irrelevant for most of the grown-ups. However, the artist himself says that it shouldn’t be observed as anything else then a design project.