Bugging Out on Spring Break

Every spring break for the last three years, to my husband’s terror, I’ve brought six-legged crawly insects indoors for the boys to observe and experience. It started in 2020 with a butterfly kit from one of my favorite brands featured in this post, where you can buy kits to raise insects from egg to to winged and ready to fly. The butterflies were a wonderful experience as we watched them emerge from cocoons and dry their wings. The boys named each one, drew pictures of them and happily released them in our backyard.

The Ant Farm

I couldn’t wait to do it again the following year, but wanted something a little different. We’d never had an ant farm before, so that’s what we chose. I ordered the kit and expected our ant farm to prosper with workers and eggs and a nursery in tunnels like a bustling underground city. When the ants arrived, however, the instructions revealed that the Department of Agriculture actually prevents shipping queen ants, and workers only live for a few weeks without them. Also, they were fire ants.

I followed the very detailed instructions for putting the fire ants into the habitat and we watched the workers dig tunnels and eat fruit and carry on. A couple weeks later, we watched some of them slowly die a lonely, queen-less death. Then, we watched as fellow workers carried off the dead and buried them in one spot outside their tunnel that we reluctantly dubbed “the cemetery.” When I couldn’t stand to witness any more harsh ant reality, we released them in a local park. Thankfully, we happen to live in the natural habitat of this particular ant. I’d like to think they were found wandering the desert and brought into a thriving colony, nursed back to health by a merciful queen.

The Praying Mantis

This year, I went back to the website and selected ladybugs as our annual insect learning experience. But, they were out of stock. So, I chose the next best thing- praying mantis! I imagined an adorable green insect sitting on some twigs and a leaf in its habitat, ready to be observed and studied. I selected two eggs, as I wanted to make sure we’d have at least one if one of the eggs failed. When the shipment arrived a day later, the instructions revealed one egg actually yields hundreds of praying mantises. Manti?

I could’ve tossed one of the eggs- or both- and made life a lot easier. Instead, I cared for the eggs as instructed, which turned out to require a lot more maintenance than I anticipated. I provided humidity once a day- but not directly! Kept them out of direct sunlight, away from drafts. I was half expecting a gremlin to hatch when one morning Big Bro came running up to me yelling, “They hatched! They hatched!”

They hatched alright. I don’t know how I expected to react to several hundred tiny praying mantises..es… inside a netted habitat, but with a fake smile slapped across my suddenly queasy face, I took out the instructions once again.

Good news for me, one must release all but a few of the insects before they start eating each other. Flashbacks of the ant cemetery flew through my mind and we went to a park to either control the local bug population or feed several birds.

I purchased live fruit flies at the pet store because of course they’ll only eat live insects. So much for the twigs and the leaf. The flies escaped the enclosure of course, so I set it outside only to find a few minutes later a very satisfied spider was perched on the habitat, gobbling up their food as it escaped. Turns out two-day-old mantis babies are terrible hunters.

Now, we have nine baby mantis bugs who have gone a few days without eating each other and I’m calling that a win. Baby Bro is still a bit wary of their pinchers, which he knows will grow quickly, but we have a solid plan to release them in our garden when they’re ready so they can protect our broccoli.

Next year, I hope the ladybugs will be back in stock.