We briefly had some very exciting pets! My friend Rachel Sevy found a praying mantis egg sack and hatched a whole bunch of them. She gave us 7 and a jar to put them in. They were legit adorable! They would stand on our fingertips and do this cute little dance.
This one was named Elsa. Or Fancy Zebra. There was no way of telling them apart, but the kids believed me when I confidently said which one was which.
Rachel split her orders of wingless fruit flies with me. We had a separate jar for the fruit fly colony. Annie and I enjoyed our mantis friends the most. It was fun showing them off to the neighborhood kids. Eventually we had just one mantis left and my fruit flies died. I put a little weevil for Elsa the mantis to eat... but the weevil ended up eating poor Elsa instead. I'm just not cut out for pet ownership.
Rachel also got me into the hobby of bug collecting! I'm much better at maintaining these dead bugs than I was with the live ones. This is the first hobby I have undertaken in the past several years, and it was an absolute delight catching and identifying all these bugs. The crown jewel of the collection is the tarantula hawk wasp. These have one of the most painful stings in the world and led me to some very amusing reading about the Schmidt Pain Index. I asked our Alexa what to do when stung by a tarantula hawk. The reply was to "lie down and scream for three minutes." I purchased a legit bug net and prepared for the tarantula hawk hunt with leather gloves and a long sleeve shirt. I managed to catch one and get it into my glass jar with rubbing alcohol without getting stung! It was so much fun, and I'm glad I have Rachel to do all the fun bug activities.
Elliot sporting a giant mesquite beetle, my local favorite
Elliot and his creative friends made the best car/ball ramp ever. Isaac was oh so pleased and oh so destructive.
This is our mickey mouse cactus. We didn't plant it- it popped up in our tomato pot, and we decided to keep it since it was cute. It grew two big circles coming off of the main head, so it looked like mickey mouse. But then... it was droopy so I watered it, the neck part rotted, and mickey's head fell off. I left it on the gravel next to the pot so that we could watch to see what it looks like as it decomposed. PLOT TWIST- The severed cactus head (pictured above behind the pot) somehow has stayed alive for several months and even sprouted new pads! I'm baffled by this as it hasn't set down roots. It must be absorbing rain water and living off of its stores? The stump left behind sprouted some new pads too. The only downside to our experiment is that Isaac has managed to sit on the severed head. Twice. Pulling tiny spines out of toddler thighs is not my favorite activity.
In other Isaac news, the little fellow recently experimented with throwing balls into the toilet. He's generally a super easy kid and does not get told "no" very often. His reaction was priceless.
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