On a wing and a prayer...

Today was good and semi-eventful, so I will do a bonus entry. We had friends over this morning, which is always fun but not necessarily bonus blog entry material. Then the boys took naps while I researched how to do a fishless cycle of an aquarium, which is a means of preparing a tank for fish BEFORE introducing the fish. (A great idea in theory, but nigh impossible in practice because A) it requires pure ammonia, which is about as rare as a four leaf clover, who knew? and B) it requires material from an existing, healthy aquarium, which I am also having difficulty finding.) But none of that is blogworthy either, I'm surprised you're even still reading. After naps, we went downstairs to find it was pouring rain. I suggested we go sit out on the porch in the rocking chairs and watch the rain, which we did recently and everyone enjoyed. So we did that, I held Charlie and Henry sat in his own chair, then I held Henry and Charlie sat in his own chair. It was really raining, and that held our attention for a while, so I don't know why I glanced over at the mason jar on the table next to us, the one with the old dried up praying mantis egg sac.

*****Flashback to about three months ago******* I'm at Panera on a Saturday morning for Jill Time, and I meet my friend Hollie and a few other friends for coffee. Hollie is moving to Wisconsin soon (booooooo) and this might be one of our last coffee dates. She greets me with a mason jar containing a dry, grayish, flaky looking thing about the size of a big tooth. "Oh, thanks!" I say reflexively. "It's a praying mantis egg sac!" she announces. I remember then that she and her two boys had had a pet praying mantis last year, and that I sort of half jokingly asked her to save me a baby if it had babies. So she has, she's saved me like dozens (hundreds?) of babies! She instructs me to keep the jar outdoors, because only after six or eight weeks of warm weather will the egg sac open, spewing forth tiny praying mantises (manti?). So I take it home, place it on a little table on our front porch, and forget it. Occasionally over the ensuing weeks, I check for babies, but even after spring passes and unofficial summer is upon us, there is just a dried-up looking pod. I figure the babies didn't make it, and I secretly hope Hollie never asks about them, because I fear I may not have cared for them properly. HER egg sac (there were two) opened weeks ago, IN THE CAR, on the long trip to Wisconsin! I contemplate throwing the egg sac away but don't, mostly out of laziness. Occasionally Henry asks when the egg will hatch, and I tell him I don't know. Never once do I stop to consider what might be involved in raising a multitude of baby praying mantises (that seems right, "manti" doesn't sound right).

Fast forward back to today, the first official day of summer. I glanced over at the mason jar, prompted by the same impulse that causes me to glance over at Pokey's fish tank each time I pass by it in the kitchen, even though I know it is empty. Tiny, feather-light bugs lined the bottom of the jar. Many were dead (how many days ago did they hatch?) but some were not. "The egg sac! The egg sac!!!" I squealed, jumping up and dumping Henry from my lap. The boys looked startled. I showed them the tiny babies in the jar. I felt a little panicked, as I had no idea how to care for baby mantises. I Googled "raising praying mantises" and emailed Hollie, and I found out they need a habitat with grass, moist cotton balls for water, and bugs to eat. Tiny bugs in the beginning, then larger ones later. I packed the boys in the van, happy to have an adventure, an we went to the pet store, where we found a plastic terrarium and a jar of wingless fruit flies with what looks like suet in the bottom. (I can't believe I paid money for this; it stinks to high heaven and features thousands of fruit flies from every stage of the fruit fly life cycle, including squirming larvae, swarming around in disgustingness. However, the alternative was to scour our yard for bugs small enough to be eaten by tiny praying mantis babies.)

We returned home, explained the situation to Russell, who has been very patient with my fish hobby but now I may be pushing it, and went outside to find sticks and grass and leaves for our habitat. We accidentally included a leaf with a spider on it, which would have been unspeakably DISASTROUS for our mantis raising project (!) but we caught our mistake and removed him promptly. We shook four live babies into the habitat (well, three live and one barely alive...I picked three live ones from the mason jar and then poked through the poor dead victim mantises for survivors. I saw a leg move feebly amidst the carnage, so I fished that one out and threw him in too, but I don't have high hopes for him.) Then I had to open that jar of disgustingness and shake out what seemed a reasonable number of fruit flies (12?). They were eager to escape, for obvious reasons. (I joked to Russell, well, half joked, that maybe this could be his role in mantis care, the handling of the fruit fly jar, but his eyes reminded me that he just placed a live fish in tequila not two weeks ago.) We put the lid on the terrarium and looked inside, and at that point we realized we had put in so much greenery, we couldn't find the praying mantises. This is a blessing and a curse, because we won't see them if they die at this stage, but if they live, we won't be able to see them until they are much bigger. We did manage to spot two of them and thought they looked pleased, but then I thought Pokey looked pleased in his new aquarium a few weeks ago, when what he actually looked was near death.

In other news, Henry has fallen asleep alone in the bed for the past few nights! Not without a few tears, but he is being very brave about it, and I am hopeful that moving him to his own room is going to be a success!