It's a bug's life

Today I spent many minutes "google-ing" the insect known as a praying mantis. My husband has a kindergarten class that needed a science project. After the tadpoles were knocked off the table by a child, a new something was needed. A trip to the discovery store found a praying mantis habitat, including a mail in form to get your ootheca (that's the egg sack). Once you get the ootheca, put it in the habitat and wait 1 to 3 weeks for it to hatch.

Today was that right amount of 1-3 weeks for the manti to hatch in my husband's classroom. about 50 of them came out of the little sack. And now according to the internet and the book that came with the habitat, these little guys (about the size of an ant) need to eat or they will eat eachother.

Here comes the fun part... the book suggested trapping fruit flies by putting a half banana in a mason jar outside and when there are a good number of fruit flies on it, shut the jar. Seems simple, so we did this last week. Yesterday afternoon still no fruit flies. Seriously? If I leave a brown banana in my kitchen for a day there are fruit flies galore... but in my back yard nothing? Maybe it's the time of year... so we tried the other trick from the book to catch bugs. We dug a hole in the back yard garden, put a jar in the hole, filled in with dirt around the jar. walking bug falls in and can't get back out. Pull jar out of the hole, put lid on and mantis food. Last night we did this, this morning no bugs.

So in between working and being at work, I searched and searched on line to find fruit flies and how you catch them, breed them, whatever. Also what do you do to feed a mantis. The best site I found was http://mantiskingdom.com/. DeShawn raises manti and has for the majority of his life. I figure he knows stuff. So I read. Turns out, these things will eat eachother and need to eat constantly, but will overeat and explode their tummies if you aren't careful. Then they can molt and mate and make new egg sack- ootheca and you start the process over again.

Just so you don't picture these little ant like guys eating eachother, we got them small crickets on the assurance of the petstore guy that they can eat these. My husband is excited. I never realized what a girly girl I am, I feel something crawling on me whenever I think of the mantis babies.