a picture of Sprout eating his first fly today. (yes, first. I was took a chunk of time to feed/ care for the mantises today. A result of the obvious... Yesterday it was geared towards finding another one, to no avail...).
Sprout's last molt did something, I'm not sure what happened but I know what you see above isn't what it's supposed to look like. His abdomen sags, brought down with gravity. The point where it does this is right behind the part where the wings will grow out of when the final molt is completed. And I think Sprout only has one more left. I'm not sure what will happen when he does molt. It is worrisome. Unlike the other two years where I've been unsuccessful in getting an adult mantis I have more then one, not only that I have a possible source for adult mantises. We went to Jack's aquarium (we were going to go to a different one, but I remembered that mom had said one of the people at Jack's aquarium had said something about tons of praying mantises on the back door). If he finds one I'll know. It'd be an adult since it's quite obvious after seeing where he found them, that to get there they'd have to fly there. Probably drawn by the light, and the other bugs around it. I just don't feel good about my odds of getting a pair out of two mantises, plus the fact I don't know if I'll even get an adult none the less two adults.
Now there's something you don't see every day. It appears to be a mating pair of parasitic wasps.
pictures of Ideal, who I let climb on a chair, since I wanted to get a good picture of him, which is difficult since he just keeps moving whenever he's in my hand. It did the trick, he stopped at the top of it and I got to take some better pictures of him. He sure lives up to his name... love the contrast he has, especially between his head, and his eyes. My favorite, now at least... (I raised him from the beginning, Sprout I didn't otherwise it may be different). I think I liked Hatchet more though, but obviously the situation has changed...
As a side note, at Jack's aquarium I got two dozen crickets (for the mantises, as flys are getting harder to find), a ten gallon glass aquarium (the intention is to make in into a second Mantis terrarium, for Ideal), a reptile lid for that ten gallon aquarium (works for mantises too), and a 2.5 gallon aquarium (for triops possibly, if not then probably for any potential guppy babies in the future).
