Post by aaron on Feb 9, 2015 12:05:39 GMT -5
This is a past tense pet discussion, because we don't have the mantids any more, but the story is a good one so I thought I would share...
In Fall 2011, we had a big female praying mantis (aka mantid, plural: mantids) on our porch that was hanging around for several days, and at times she even appeared to be "knocking" on the door with her little forearm. It was starting to get cold and she was very friendly so we ended up taking her in and making her a nice little terrarium to live in. We called her Mantid (very original!), and I actually ended up having a great relationship with her before she passed-- she would ride around on me for hours, always wanted to be picked up, etc. Things were so nice with her that when another mantid arrived on our porch that same fall, we took her in as well.
So, being female mantids, they both periodically laid what is called "oothecas", or egg sacs in their containers. We didn't think much of it. I figured if they were fertile, they would hatch in the spring and I didn't give much further thought to it. As we were nearing winter both of them passed away-- they only live about a year and this was pretty much the point of old age for them.
I imagine it is starting to become clear where this story is going. We had just recently turned the heat on in our apartment for the first time that year about a week after the second mantid passed away, and we were starting to clean up and put away their terrariums when I noticed a baby mantid crawling around. And another. And another. When we turned on the heat, it triggered the oothecas to hatch early. I really should have seen this coming, but I didn't. Oh well.
At first there was about ten of them. I had each of them in their own clear plastic cup with some dirt and a stick. We were pretty excited because we really loved the mantids and we thought it would be fun to try to raise them. But over the next couple weeks, the other egg sacs hatched, and rather than getting ten babies from each of them, the numbers went up dramatically. In the end, we found ourselves with roughly 200 babies and rapidly approaching the dead of winter-- so there was no option to release them without ensuring their death. Of course, these little guys like to eat each other, particularly as they get to about their third molt, so we had to try to house them as separately as possible.
We bought every single plastic fish bowl at every petco and petsmart in a 30 mile radius (that's a lot in the DC suburbs where we live)... We had literally a wall of fishbowls, which at first housed about five mantids each... this was the best we could do, and casualties were inevitable. At first we fed them fruit flies, so we were buying the jars of live fruit flies from petco-- and eventually we had to start going to petco to buy at least 200 crickets a week. You should have heard our apartment at night. It was a party for crickets.
We were at petco constantly. Every day there was something we needed to keep this going, and in visiting our petco I met this little green quaker named Cupcake, who was just sitting there, looking very unassuming and thoughtful in her box, and totally fell in love with her. I knew how much work a parrot is, though, and was hesitant to take that step, largely because I didn't know if I or the others in the family would appreciate the dramatic effect on our lifestyle I knew it would have. For nearly six months we saw her at least once a week. In retrospect I am really happy she was not purchased by anyone else. Birds don't usually last that long at the store before they get purchased or moved to a different store.
As time went by, the number of mantids dropped dramatically-- mostly due to them eating each other. We obviously couldn't have 200 fish bowls in our living room, so we did our best. We ended up with about 40 nearly adult mantids as it started to get warm again. We were spending literally hours a day taking care of all of these guys, trying to give them some time out of their fishbowls each day, trying to keep things adequately humid and trying to supervise each molt to make sure nothing went wrong (they molt 6 or 7 times before they become adults and grow wings). It was a crazy experience... one I wouldn't trade for anything (nor repeat... LOL). They are fascinating little insects-- remarkably social and incredibly evolved hunters. It's really very impressive (and quite gruesome at times).
One day I came home from work, and Cupcake was there. My fiancee and our roommate had gone to petco and bought Cupcake to surprise me, because they saw how much I loved her. It was so exciting. I don't encourage impulse purchases like this, and the fact is they had absolutely no idea what they were getting us into, and we'd never buy another bird from Petco (I don't think they should be selling birds at all)... but Cupcake is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and our whole family. It was clearly meant to be.
In the end, our mantids started dying off in captivity because of a fungus that adult crickets carry in warm weather, so we started releasing them as soon as we felt the weather was adequate and they hit adulthood. We successfully released 29 adult mantids into the wild. To this day, when it is the right season, we will often get a variety of different aged mantids visiting our patio. We don't take any of them inside any more, but certainly enjoy their presence, and we like to think they are related to our babies. Who knows if that's true but it's a nice thought.
So that's the story of Cupcake and the Mantids (a good name for a band!). It was quite a year.
In Fall 2011, we had a big female praying mantis (aka mantid, plural: mantids) on our porch that was hanging around for several days, and at times she even appeared to be "knocking" on the door with her little forearm. It was starting to get cold and she was very friendly so we ended up taking her in and making her a nice little terrarium to live in. We called her Mantid (very original!), and I actually ended up having a great relationship with her before she passed-- she would ride around on me for hours, always wanted to be picked up, etc. Things were so nice with her that when another mantid arrived on our porch that same fall, we took her in as well.
So, being female mantids, they both periodically laid what is called "oothecas", or egg sacs in their containers. We didn't think much of it. I figured if they were fertile, they would hatch in the spring and I didn't give much further thought to it. As we were nearing winter both of them passed away-- they only live about a year and this was pretty much the point of old age for them.
I imagine it is starting to become clear where this story is going. We had just recently turned the heat on in our apartment for the first time that year about a week after the second mantid passed away, and we were starting to clean up and put away their terrariums when I noticed a baby mantid crawling around. And another. And another. When we turned on the heat, it triggered the oothecas to hatch early. I really should have seen this coming, but I didn't. Oh well.
At first there was about ten of them. I had each of them in their own clear plastic cup with some dirt and a stick. We were pretty excited because we really loved the mantids and we thought it would be fun to try to raise them. But over the next couple weeks, the other egg sacs hatched, and rather than getting ten babies from each of them, the numbers went up dramatically. In the end, we found ourselves with roughly 200 babies and rapidly approaching the dead of winter-- so there was no option to release them without ensuring their death. Of course, these little guys like to eat each other, particularly as they get to about their third molt, so we had to try to house them as separately as possible.
We bought every single plastic fish bowl at every petco and petsmart in a 30 mile radius (that's a lot in the DC suburbs where we live)... We had literally a wall of fishbowls, which at first housed about five mantids each... this was the best we could do, and casualties were inevitable. At first we fed them fruit flies, so we were buying the jars of live fruit flies from petco-- and eventually we had to start going to petco to buy at least 200 crickets a week. You should have heard our apartment at night. It was a party for crickets.
We were at petco constantly. Every day there was something we needed to keep this going, and in visiting our petco I met this little green quaker named Cupcake, who was just sitting there, looking very unassuming and thoughtful in her box, and totally fell in love with her. I knew how much work a parrot is, though, and was hesitant to take that step, largely because I didn't know if I or the others in the family would appreciate the dramatic effect on our lifestyle I knew it would have. For nearly six months we saw her at least once a week. In retrospect I am really happy she was not purchased by anyone else. Birds don't usually last that long at the store before they get purchased or moved to a different store.
As time went by, the number of mantids dropped dramatically-- mostly due to them eating each other. We obviously couldn't have 200 fish bowls in our living room, so we did our best. We ended up with about 40 nearly adult mantids as it started to get warm again. We were spending literally hours a day taking care of all of these guys, trying to give them some time out of their fishbowls each day, trying to keep things adequately humid and trying to supervise each molt to make sure nothing went wrong (they molt 6 or 7 times before they become adults and grow wings). It was a crazy experience... one I wouldn't trade for anything (nor repeat... LOL). They are fascinating little insects-- remarkably social and incredibly evolved hunters. It's really very impressive (and quite gruesome at times).
One day I came home from work, and Cupcake was there. My fiancee and our roommate had gone to petco and bought Cupcake to surprise me, because they saw how much I loved her. It was so exciting. I don't encourage impulse purchases like this, and the fact is they had absolutely no idea what they were getting us into, and we'd never buy another bird from Petco (I don't think they should be selling birds at all)... but Cupcake is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and our whole family. It was clearly meant to be.
In the end, our mantids started dying off in captivity because of a fungus that adult crickets carry in warm weather, so we started releasing them as soon as we felt the weather was adequate and they hit adulthood. We successfully released 29 adult mantids into the wild. To this day, when it is the right season, we will often get a variety of different aged mantids visiting our patio. We don't take any of them inside any more, but certainly enjoy their presence, and we like to think they are related to our babies. Who knows if that's true but it's a nice thought.
So that's the story of Cupcake and the Mantids (a good name for a band!). It was quite a year.
