Right, Wrong & The Mantis

I had made the suggestion to my mother, that as a "fun" Christmas gift to my son, he might be interested in growing a praying mantis. He was very interested. And also very patient because it was April when we finally opened the box and took out the order form, which brought us here.

The instructions tell you that once the egg arrives to fasten it to a stick. This can be done several ways. You may run a thread through the outer layer of the dcase and tie it to the stick, use white glue to attach the case and stick to your habitat. Place your habitate in a warm area. Now that's all well and good but I also ordered the wingless fruit flies. So our shipment consisted of four tubes. Two with this powder stuff that looked like instant potates, one with blue gushy stuff and fly larve AND (last but not least) the mantis egg (Note: A single mantis egg can hatch 100 babies, WTF!)

There is a label on the tube, it tells you to spray the egg, once attached in it's habitat with warm water, regularly. I have to say I was so BUSY with life that those four tubes were somewhat neglected. The first round of flies (it will yield 10 x 30 flies) croaked before I got them into the powdered stuff (which is their FOOD! Um hello, failing science 101 here).

This booklet, which is in Spanish AND French, does not give NEARLY enough instructions for 100 little insects to be born in this house. Just sayin'. We finally got the habitat all set up. My son went outside and found a suitable stick AND lots of grass. We used twisty ties to fasten the egg and I sprayed it with warm water. Less than 24 hours later ....

There was HATCHING. And panic. I had to read the next step ... all in a hurry. Hatching should take place in TWO WEEKS. (someone lied on that one, try ONE WEEK). Shortly after eggs hatch, it is important to separate the nymphs into jars so they don't eat each other (oh THATS NICE!) and add live insects to feed (I had no problem with that last step, in a week I had 60 plus flightless fruit flies.

Luckily I have a BABY, therefore I have baby food jars. My son and I scrambled around searching for elastic bands, pieces of cloth, more grass and twigs.

I'm pretty sure this is a horrible picture but we did manage to use a teeny tiny paintbrush to aid the little fellas into their individual jars. They were AWESOME to see. Climbing on the grass. Add the live food. Then we watched (think of watching a moving needle in a haystack, you see nothing because they BLEND).

There was more reading of the mantis manual. More like mantis BIBLE. If you do not have enough food or space, release the nymphs outside in garden areas to increase the likelihood of their survival. EXCELLENT.

Here's where my story goes wrong. There should have been this ...

Instead there was this ...

I'm not sure what the heck happened. The mantis bible has no "troubleshooting" guide. Each of the four, were found upside down with x's for eyes. I though maybe the cloth wasn't letting in enough air, so I caught a flying ant and watch the thing survive for four days. (I'm not into insect torture, really, I'm not) Now, my son wants to try again because those little baby's were "so cool". Me? Notsomuch.