just got home from visiting family in Hungary, some things came back with me, and some things happened at home D:


at home:

i had a friend watch our cat and supposedly feed my bugs. it would appear she never fed my roaches/millipede, or tried, and let the some of the babies escape and then stoped feeding them?? anyway. their food was completely gone, a good amount of hisser babes are running around my house (i caught most of them, but who knows, really), and my big femme (african millipede) isn't looking so good. a lot of the babes are starved looking and sluggish, though i guess that could be the weird cold-streak we're going through now.

Phiddipus the spider was all cobwebbed up, and i had thought she hadn't been fed either or something (i'm pretty ignorant when it comes to spiders, but i love my phiddipus)... and then i misted her cage (it was empty of food and looked really dry (i have live plants for her. or had. they're dead now).... and her cobweb began leaking babies!! i don't know how this happened, but i'm glad of it! but now i need to get fruitflies or something....?? i don't know how to care for spiderlings.

all the other creatures are ok.

and...i snuck a few bugs across customs. well, snails mostly, because Hungary has giant land snails and we don't....so...yeah. three of them are doing fine and the others are all closed up yet. but i have at least three youngin's (i didn't take any large ones because i didn't have the room to care for them in Hungary and thought the bigger shells might show up on a scanner or something. i don't know what they do in customs) ... i also got a big weevil and even bigger groundbeetle, a metallic beetle and something else i haven't identified. i had some fine Hungarian grasshoppers, but they didn't make it through the shaking of luggage D:> i do have a nice adult specimen, though (dead. but still. nice)

Hungary was nice. now i've gotta go downtown and get some crickets and pick up the mail. uuuuhg.

2 comments View Entry

what might be a good thing is not so good, considering it's in a herbivorous insect 'culture'

last week i found a spider in there, from a feeder plant i had grown outside. removed, no problem.

but apparently she laid a sack in there D:

so now i've got loads of little spiderlings in with my katydid, various other nymphs, caterpillars, and weevils!

i don't really know how to remove them?? i would switch all my residents to another container, but there are also eggs in/on this enclosure (from the wingless moth in my last blog), and i'm worried they'll hatch to be perfect snacks for these spiders-babes.

not that i don't appreciate their life, but i'd rather they not eat my friends.

all the creatures in this enclosure are at least 20x the size of the spiderlings (until the caterpillars hatch, that is). are they safe? how can i remove the babes before they do damage? can i at all??

another question: what do you do with your bugs when traveling? i'll be leaving for a month in Hungary this friday, and beyond trying to make sure everyone has enough food to last and a decent supply of waterjell i'm not sure what to do?

0 comments View Entry

this morning i woke up and chanced to look at the ceiling... which was covered in moths!!?

Admitedly, i didn't first make the connection. but then while doing my daily cleaning, i found that some odd creature had emerged in one of my mesh enclosures.... it was really, really odd. it looked to have come from a cocoon i had, but there were no wings! at first i thought it was deformed, but then i looked it up on bug-guide, and... well.

turns out i got a female Tussock moth! she brought in quite a number of boys. and since they're still sleeping on the ceiling i think i'll catch a few and put them in there so she can have some nice babes.

jeeze. thank goodness i opted out of air condition this summer. open windows bring in all kinds of magic.

2 comments View Entry

hahahahahahahahaha

graduated highschool yesterday so today i went to the insectarium (in phillidelphia, PA) with my mum to celebrate. it was an adventure. nobody was there, until about half an hour before we left a lady who worked there came by to clean up and we wound up talking about roach maladies and she got out the vinigaroon that i had been afraid to grab out of the petting zoo and let me hold it.

that's not to say i didn't like it. i LOVED just sitting around and looking at all the creatures. out of the living things they had some tarantulas, roaches, millipedes, and walking sticks, which seem pretty common to me now adays. but i've never seen a vinigaroon in real life, and would never imagine them to be so lightweight or easy to hold. and whip scorpions are tinier than i thought, too!

i fell in love with Cryptoglossa verrucosa, though. oooh it was so sweet, slowly moving across my hand, and instantly flipping itself over when i put it on its back...hard as a rock, and easily mistaken for a tasty berry. if i lived anywhere where they were i'd have some. to be honest the attraction is probably because they have manurisms similar to local weevils, only they're not weevils and they're a lot bigger than any local weevils, too.

also the Lubber grasshoppers. i'd seen pictures, but nothing beats watching them move closeup; each tarsi somehow magically grasping the glass (and i was alowd to get up obnoxiously close to the glass since nobody was around)

then all the pinned bugs! oooooh the weevils from New Guinea....!! i would kill for a living specimen. (weevils are probably some of the most asthetically pleasing creatures i can think of, aside from aphids, i suppose.. . . ok. not the most. but one of my faves).

ANYWAY it was my first time meeting a lot of creatures in-person that i'd read about, and my first time to an insectarium (apparantly the largest in the US, too?). it was pretty corny... but just my flavor of corn.

came home with a yearning for a few Death feigning beetles, and three bug-print ties (for $0.97 each, i might add.). oh, and the lubbers. gotta catch or trade some eastern lubbers.

sorry if this post is a bit loopy. it's late here and both of my pinkie toes went numb and hour ago for reasons unbeknownst to me...so i'm not too aware of errors in my grammar, and appologize for  what i'm sure is a tough read.

also if anyone knows where to get any of the aforementioned bugs, please tell me. i'm gonna look, but hey. free knowledge is free?

3 comments View Entry

haha so i have a lot of bugs in a lot of containers and i'm pretty sure my college doesn't allow for pets.

y'think i'd have good chances of taking them anyway if i put them in tubaware?

to be honest i'm going to take them regardless ((even if i went there with none i'm sure i'd aquire some while i was there. it's such a bad habbit *sigh*)), so if anyone reads this and has any good ideas for bug concealing i'd like to hear about it!

2 comments View Entry

well my camera sucks, but today i discovered my scanner has a max resolution of 1600! which means now it will be used to scan in bugs.

hahaha the only problem (obviously) is that if they're alive, and they move, i get a really neato psychedelic image instead of the creature.

3 comments View Entry

so i got three hissing roaches from my mum as a holiday gift, and i've been caring for them for a good three weeks now, but i can't be sure where they came from.. . cause they were a gift.

they're all female, and two of them are doing really well.

however, the one has gone and lost half of her antenna (on each), which at first didn't bother me, cause i've heard that's fairly common. but then yesterday i was looking at her closer and realized that she's missing the last tarsal segment on two of the legs on her right side.

what's more, while the other two are social and tend to stay on the heated side of their enclosure, she's on the top layer, away from the heat, and away from the other two.

i've been feeding them letice, dog food, and various other veggie scraps, is it something, or lack of something, in the diet? but it's not effecting the other two.. .?? she's also not as active, though she is eating.

i can't seem to find any information on this kind of problem, maybe i'm not looking in the right place, or maybe this isn't a real problem. . .? either way, any help on the matter would be appriciated!!!

EDIT: apparantly this is a real problem! not going by any new info i've descovered, but more that i left the house, and upon returning home just now, i found that she moved from her place. i was innitially excited, thinking she had become social, or just acive in general, but i found her on her back on the bottom layer!! she's not dead yet, but i fear she will be dying soon. i inspected her and found that she's now missing the last tarsal segment on her back left leg as well.. .

i still don't know if she's sick or old or what, but i've isolated her just in case, and will try feeding her all kinds of healthy things with positive thoughts. . . ug.

Tags: Madagascar Hissing Cockroach Hisser

4 comments View Entry