A couple of years ago, some good friends of ours suffered a devastating house fire. They woke at 3am to the smell of smoke, discovered a kitchen blaze that had already spread to the lounge and the hall, and so they grabbed their kids, the cat, two guinea pigs, and (at the insistence of their six-year-old) a glass tank containing three stick insects, and fled to the safety of a neighbour’s house, from where they called the fire brigade. By the time two fire tenders had arrived, sirens screaming and lights flashing, it was too late—the fire had taken hold and although the hoses dosed the flames, almost everything was destroyed. “We lost virtually every possession,” our friends said afterwards, “but at least nobody was hurt. Not even a stick insect was left behind.”