Pill bugs. Rolly Polies. Doodle bugs. A hundred bins filled with 74 species of isopods take up almost the entirety of an extra bedroom. Meet Cheyenne Houghton, a heavy metal enthusiast, devoted father, reptile keeper and more recently, full-time isopod breeder. Houghton’s Springfield home is enough to make most people squirm.
He started his business, Pods Solo, on Craigslist as a way to make some extra cash. Only a few months ago, he was regularly working 12-hour shifts at a steel fabrication shop. Coming home at 3 a.m. four days a week is hard with a 7-year-old daughter. When local districts switched to online school, it became impossible.
“Isopods have allowed me to make cookies with my daughter tonight instead of going to work and not even being able to see her,” Houghton said.
He became interested in isopods after researching bioactive enclosures. It was a shared love of amphibians, reptiles and all the creepy crawlies in between that led to the first bug bin, Houghton said. In tandem with springtails, beneficial bacteria and live plants, isopods can mimic an animal’s natural habitat on a microscopic level — including its self-sustaining properties. Maintenance in a thriving bioactive set-up is minimal as rotting vegetation, mold and waste is happily digested into nutrient-rich soil. What started as one bin quickly multiplied with both Houghton’s and his daughter’s fascination and turned from utility to interest.
“It sounds gross, but it’s actually kind of fun,” he said. “I get to see them right after dropping babies. . . it’s exciting to watch life propagate before your eyes. People know bugs make babies. But, to watch their little families grow — it’s really cool.”
Houghton began selling isopods on Craigslist right around the time his bins were starting to get crowded with these “little families.” When his friend offered to sell him his entire collection at a steep discount, the number of bins quadrupled overnight — and so did his business. Craigslist turned into Ebay and then a website. Profit, which at first only teetered over a few hundred dollars, began overtaking his full-time managerial salary.
“The pods provide,” Houghton often says jokingly to his wife, who isn’t always thrilled at having crustaceans as permanent occupants in their spare bedroom.
Before his daughter switched to online school in the fall, he decided the timing was right for him to quit his full-time job and devote himself entirely to Pods Solo.
This isn’t Houghton’s first entrepreneurial endeavor. Almost a decade ago he managed heavy metal concert bookings for the West Coast. But, the bug business has proven to be a different venture — one that’s not easily explained in a newspaper ad or as a sticker on the side of his truck. It’s a niche market that’s dependent on customers — who already know what they’re looking for — coming to him.
“It just kind of fell into place,” he said. “It wasn’t anything that I necessarily chose and is totally different than anything I’ve ever done.”
When Houghton explains what he does for a living to other people, their reaction is usually more confused than disgusted, he said. Why bugs?
From a reptile keeper’s perspective, the main benefit of a bioactive enclosure is how easy it is to maintain. Hometown Pets, who have a large selection of amphibians and reptiles, now sell Houghton’s isopods and springtails for this exact reason.
“We try to do it as local as possible,” Trevor Phillips, Hometown Pets manager, said. “His selection is way better than our breeder in Washington. Probably way better than most breeders anywhere.”
The family owned and operated pet store is one of few that not only sells bioactive supplies but also implements them into some of their own enclosures. Philips, who breeds thousands of feeder insects like dubia roaches and red runners, says that the mixture of isopods, earthworms and beetles keeps the smell down. In one of the backrooms, ball pythons used for breeding projects are kept in glass tanks — not empty, stacked plastic bins that are common within the hobby. Isopods play an important but invisible role. Mourning geckos flit between the explosion of green leaves in their terrarium, fertilized by decomposed leaves and waste. A blue-tongued skink disappears into a hobbit hole, the dark soil teeming with springtails.
Phillips admits it can be hard to always provide ideal conditions in a pet store, when animals are in temporary housing, but UVB lighting and live plants are a start.
“It’s a lot more expensive to set up to begin with but in the long run you don’t have to pay someone to clean it,” he says. “We sell bioactive, not paper towels.”
For keepers like Houghton whose collection goes beyond supplementary isopods for his other enclosures, the answer is more complicated. Isopod keeping is niche — even within the reptile community. For many, that’s a part of the appeal. Most people have heard of or known someone who has owned a bearded dragon, leopard gecko or ball python. However, for rare varieties of isopods, popularity quickly goes from a few million reptile owners to a handful of people who have worked with that particular species in the United States.
The more expensive the species is, the harder it is not only to keep but also to breed and import. Rubber Duckies sold in the US for example (isopods from the Cubarius genius whose signature orange bills and yellow faces gave them their notary) are all from a single shipment imported from Thailand. Isopods have a bit of a beanie baby effect — that is, the longer a particular species remains in the US, the less rare and expensive they become. For breeders to keep their edge, this means constantly being on the lookout for new and exciting species.
“I’ve heard some people joke that they’ll have to take a second mortgage out on their house,” Houghton said, referring to purchasing a spiny isopod that is so new to the US, it’s not even available online.
When he posted his first Craigslist ad in May, he could never imagine that it would evolve into a full-time job.
Houghton doesn’t know how he’s going to ship live animals as winter approaches or even if business will still be booming when his customers are no longer quarantined and “bored enough to collect bugs.” But for now, he’s home for dinner every night for the first time since his daughter was born.
