My first pet was a tarantula, then a Hercules beetle. Eventually, I decided stick bugs were all the rage – until one day when a stick bug decided to make like a tree and leave its enclosure. Years passed and I forgot about the missing stick bug. One night I awoke to a tree branch scraping against my window like a sinister, gnarled hand. Something about the way the branch swayed seemed so familiar, then I remembered we had trimmed that branch years ago. I walked over and opened the window.

“My, look how big you’ve gotten!”

Eddie Shannon is an undergraduate at Arizona State University, where he is studying English. You can find more of him on Twitter at @eashanno.