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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: gen 4 [1]
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Date: 2023-06-24
Some here may remember the saga of bob. The sweet bug found on our porch. After days of refusing to leave we brought them in to live safely in our house. We bought an enclosure, learned what mantis ate, and gave them a name, bob. Of course the smart readers of KTK quickly noticed bob was a female but the name stuck.
bob gave us and the cats hours of entertainment. She liked to hangout with my little one watching videos or cleaning herself.
bob
Eventually she laid some egg sacks called ootheca. She was an adult when we found her and we had no idea if the eggs were fertilized. But after she passed we saved her eggs in the fridge to be set out the next spring. They had been out a couple months, we were pretty much ready to give up when they finally started hatching.
bob laying an egg sack
We kept a couple dozen in jars and let the rest loose in the yard. When TLO and I went on our summer road trip mom was tasked with caring for them. No fault of hers but when we returned home many were missing. As mantis mature apparently they get to an age where they will eat each other ...oops.
mini-bobs
We separated the remaining and continued to care for them. Our hope was to have a male and female we could breed to continue bob’s lineage. We would see others in the yard and they seemed much healthier than those we kept. Eventually we were down to only one. She didn’t start as the healthiest looking but continued to flourish.
bob II
Unfortunately, after feeding one night I left the enclosure ajar. We were never able to find her.
Seemed all hope was lost in our quest of continuing bob’s legacy. Then late last summer I found an injured mantis in the backyard. Her eye was damaged, which explains the name, one-eyed bob the third. We brought her in, fed her and she seemed to regain her strength.
She was never as robust as bob. I assumed only having one eye threw off her depth perception. We often had to hand-feed her the crickets.
After laying an ootheca she became very weak. We continued to hand feed her but she was barely able to hold the crickets. She really seemed to enjoy nibbling apple pie filling off my finger. Probably not the best for her but it made her happy.
one-eyed bob the third
After she passed we put her eggs in the fridge to set out this spring. Today the first baby emerged. We expect a couple dozen will follow over the next day or so.
The saga continues. Welcome to the world, bob IV, may you become as fierce a hunter as your great-grandmother.
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