The Austin Zoo boasts many fuzzy faces and feline friends (just don't get too close) as well as birds, turtles, snakes, and one giant cockroach. Spend a weekend afternoon feeding the goats, sheep, pigs, and llamas as well as getting close up views of rescued bears, lions, and a host of other animals that don't make for great pets. Since Austin Zoo is a rescue zoo that "provides sanctuary to displaced animals from a... more ›

This month's Dionysium is going on an insect theme. We're excited to see that it looks like Wayne Alan Brenner is going to be "guest-curating" the evening. Here's the line-up of what's going on: AN APOLOGY Chronicle writer Wayne Alan Brenner delivers a formal apology for his ill-advised, cockroach-based eco-sabotage of our fair City A PRESENTATION UT Entomologist Barrett Klein presents his miniature sculptures and graphics, with notes about the insects they're based on... more ›

Sometimes it is hard to be a Texan. When we lived in the Midwest we might have seen a cockroach once every few years. Here we see them ALL THE TIME and they are so big they should probably be paying rent. Luckily we haven't seen too many snakes, but we have heard stories--of them living in garages, finding their way to bathrooms. If we found a snake in our bathroom we would probably die on the spot. We are fragile like that. Spiders don't usually trouble us. We might wake up with bites, but at least their skittering across our knees and arms doesn't wake us up the way a GIGANTIC COCKROACH probably would. Of course, sometimes the size of the spiders we see around here is a little alarming. Sometimes we want to make our way to Alaska and set up in an igloo so we wouldn't have to deal with all of these bugs and rodents and reptiles. more ›