I love holidays. Who doesn’t? Holidays are great, because here is a day where there is so much celebration and festivity and good food and gladness that you would think a pest control family could come together and forget about bugs for just a moment.

You would think.

Take Halloween. You would think Halloween is about dressing up, chili and cider, trick-or-treating, candy, and  perhaps a few of those yucky things like ghouls and goblins.

Except for the occasional “worms crawling in” and “worms crawling out”  and fake spiders on  large cotton webs,  you would think everyone could just leave bugs out of it.

But there are some who cannot leave well enough alone.  If  I must I can understand the assortment of plastic insects my 3 year old received in her trick-or-treat pumpkin bucket.  There was a green fly, a very realistic looking black spider, and a bright orange scorpion. I understand that these fall into the category of tricks and there are always those neighbors who want to be different so they pass out tricks instead of treats. It must not bother them to know their money is wasted when all the tricks end up in the trash because they are not immediately edible and therefore not interesting.

Then there was this, which, try as I may, I could not understand:

If you could not tell that is a Gummy Roach.  After getting over the feeling of repulsion that welled up inside of me when I saw this eyesore amidst all of the prettily packaged chocolate and lollipops, the next thought that came to my head was “WHY?”

Why, first of all, would anyone manufacture this? Why would anyone then buy it in mass and offer it to children? Would any kid ever eat this? Is this a trick or is it a treat? Please tell me you vote its a trick because if anyone out there would view a gummy roach as a treat to actually be chewed up and swallowed, I have to believe something is seriously wrong with you.

Would you eat this? Be honest.  My daughter would not so I brought it to work and had my brother James photograph it in the wrapping before I dared him to bite off its chewy little head. He did so with gusto, but then he is a young college-aged guy so  it is no wonder that the sound of rubbery cockroach brains sloshing around in his mouth did not make him squirm in the slightest.