In May 2016, my friend Željko brought me a jar as a present. Inside, there were two tiny, fragile animals, Vietnamese walking sticks, or Medauroidea extradentata, as scientists prefer to call them.

I’ve put them in a terrarium, and every night I’d use a water sprinkler to mimic a tropical rain.

Borg female supremacy

Vietnamese walking sticks are generally female. They reproduce asexually, through parthenogenesis.

When the two completely matured, they started laying eggs. The new ones hatched would be the exact copies of their mothers.

Soon, my terrarium population was growing fast with daughters of 1of2 and 2of2.

As you can notice, I named the inhabitants of my Unimatrix 01 system in the Borg-classification language. “We are One” philosophy seemed to be the perfect designation for this enclosed biosystem where genetically copied animals pretended to be trees.

One day in December 1of2 stopped moving. She just went into a corner and peacefully stopped breathing

My daily morning habit would be to count them. By counting them, I could register new generations of their progeny.

After 60-ish walking sticks, counting became a challenging and time-consuming task. Being everywhere, on the glass terrarium walls, on the leaves, under the leaves, on the ground, on top of each other… I would always miss some. At 60-something, I stopped counting them.

To be fair, these little nocturnal creatures do not move much during the day. Naturally, it took me some time to realize that, one day in December, 1of2 stopped moving. She just went into a corner, as if hiding away from her daughters’ sight, and peacefully stopped breathing.

Is she just playing dead?

I left her there for some time, as with stick insects, one never knows.

Once, one of them lost a leg (sometimes it happens, as they are fragile and could get entangled when shedding their skin in the molting phase), and that leg continued to move by itself for several days, while it was obviously dead.

So I asked myself, how could I know that 1of2, a member of the species that often plays dead, is truly dead?

After a couple of days of her not moving at all, it was evident she was not pretending.

But what does one do with such a deceased pet? Should I organize a burial? Should I just flush her down the toilet? Or throw her to my carnivorous plant and hope it does the job?

I decided to do something that felt more appropriate: bring her to the homeland of her ancestors for her final rest.

Google search for the paradise

Of course, it couldn’t be just any place in Vietnam. If I go through all the hassle, it better be worth it. This girl should go to paradise.

“Paradise islands in Vietnam” Google search showed a few results, with Phu Quoc, a tear-shaped island, always claiming the top of the list. With its supposedly peaceful atmosphere, fresh air, crystal-clear waters, white sand beaches, and green coconut trees, it sounded like an excellent choice.

Bringing a dead animal over several border controls; is that allowed?

And there I was, researching Vietnam visa requirements, buying flight tickets, thinking about potential legal issues of my idea…

Bringing a deceased animal over several border controls; is that allowed? All those documentaries about people getting arrested for smuggling a bag of peanuts rushed through my mind. And on top of that, I am flying to a country that still applies capital punishment as a legal penalty.

Then again… This is not a typical dead animal. A walking stick bug does not stink even when alive. At that moment, this was just an empty shell, a vehicle that one of them used in its short lifetime, a chitin exoskeleton at most.

I’m sure we bring a lot of insects over borders every day, but their size makes them unnoticeable.

Besides paradise island, Vietnam also has a hell cave. Head north, to Marble Mountain, to discover Am Phu Cave!

Preparing the Vietnamese walking stick’s funeral

I carefully removed the dead body of 1of2 from the terrarium. Her sister 2of2, her many daughters, and nieces, were all standing still in silence. Vietnamese walking sticks don’t cry.

I wrapped the fragile body in paper tissue, enclosed it in a plastic bag, and hid it in my toiletry case, hoping that the mess inside would help with not detecting 1of2 at airports’ x-ray scans.

Before leaving Croatia, I just needed to do one more thing: sort out the insect-sitting while I was away.

Lida and Sašo, proud owners of Ramona and successful dog-sitters of other dogs, lived in my neighborhood and luckily agreed to take care of the Vietnamese gang, too. I packed the whole terrarium and brought it on foot to their flat, 900 meters away.

My mind, concentrated on the funeral of 1of2, completely forgot that Zagreb in early February is not a tropical paradise. At minus 10 degrees Celsius, I almost killed the entire offspring of the pet I wanted to provide a decent funeral for. How irresponsible, stupid, and ironic that would have been!

Luckily, these twigs with six legs are sturdy little fellows, and the warm apartment of Lida and Sašo made them resurrect from the dead.

One can find a true icon of resurrection in Vietnam too. In Vung Tau, discover Vietnamese Jesus!

In the end, I was carrying only one Vietnamese stick insect over the border.

When the machine issuing baggage tags asked me questions, I lied that I did not have any fragile or perishable items in my bag and proceeded to the check-in.

Four flights away (Zagreb to Istanbul, Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur to Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City to Phu Quoc), and 1of2 and I successfully and without trouble landed at our destination.

If you're embarking on a farewell journey after the cremation of your best animal friend, you'll want to read these tips for traveling with pet ashes!

Floating away into the sunset of Phu Quoc

I chose Ong Lang Beach, one of the nicest and strangely less popular among the tourists on the island (which made our separation a private matter). I waited for the sunset while wearing my black swimming trunks, color-appropriate for the occasion.

After folding my boarding pass into the shape of a boat, I put 1of2’s remains in this paper ark, and let her float away in the peaceful seas of the Gulf of Thailand. The waves slowly brought her away from the Vietnamese shores.

From the tear-shaped island of Phu Quoc, bon voyage, my little friend! Tam biet!

Did you ever lose a pet? How did you make your farewell?
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