Two weeks before his fourth birthday, my son leaned close, eyes wide, and whisper-shouted, “Can I get pet snails?”

In Colorado that request is technically a misdemeanor—non-native gastropods are agricultural pests. I tried to explain the law to my pre-K philosopher, who only wanted something slimy to love, but my words tangled in his imagination.

I steered his disappointment toward play.

“If we did have snails, we could name them Mac & Cheese.”

He shook his head. “No. Stick & Stick 2.”

We laughed, and the snail dream slipped away—but his desire for something small and strange lingered.

So we wandered into an exotic-pet store, aisles lined with creatures I never imagined bringing home. We didn’t leave empty handed; the container in my hands felt like a nightmare.

At our kitchen table, we lifted the lid. A Giant African Millipede unfurled like a midnight river, glossy segments gleaming under the light. Hundreds of legs rippled in hushed waves. A faint, earthy musk rose.

We fell for her instantly—a relic from another age, a piece of the forest floor brought indoors. We named her Marti Jean Millipede, after the old-world charm that clung to her many-legged silhouette.

People hear we’ve added a “new pet” and expect another cat, maybe a dog after we lost our beloved pup years ago. I say, “giant millipede,” and the room goes still. A nervous chuckle follows.

“You mean… a centipede?”

No.

Centipedes are the murderous cousins—darting, stinging.

Marti, by contrast, moves with the slow assurance of a medieval tank wrapped in licorice. She burrows, climbs, and folds herself around fallen leaves, all under the watchful gaze of our cats, Harold and Maude. In their patient, predatory intensity, I glimpse my own motherhood—ever-present, ever-watchful, always weighing when to hold close and when to let go.

When I hold Marti, she curls for a heartbeat, then begins her slow procession up my arm, hundreds of tiny feet rippling like the pull of a tide. She doesn’t bite, doesn’t sting, doesn’t bristle. She simply explores, mapping my skin the way my son traces the edges of his ever-expanding world.

Her quiet persistence is its own kind of gesture, vanishing the moment it’s given—like a meal set down, a mess swept away, tenderness tucked into a blanket at bedtime.

Her appetite is fickle. Sometimes a cucumber lingers for days before it’s gone, while a blackberry dissolves at once, leaving only a purple bruise on the moss.

She offers no thanks. Most of us don’t.

Yet the act of offering matters. What disappears in the moment becomes the soil where something new can grow.

Millipedes are detritivores—creatures that turn discarded matter into nourishment. They thrive on decay, extracting life from rot. She works in silence, turning what’s overlooked into what sustains.

I thought I’d be teaching my son how to care for something overlooked. Instead, Marti Jean teaches us both—to notice, to wait, to rest.

Every night the house falls silent, save for the rustle of Marti’s many legs over dry leaves, the crunch of her mouth working them to dust.

Together she and I move through the remnants, unseen.