Thergothon
Shaggy Gekko
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Looking at all the images of butts... err butterflies, in my photo library, I came across one particular image with a neat story.
It's somewhat sad, fair warning.
Late October of 2009, the weather was getting cold. Just a few days before Halloween I decided to go and see a movie at a local cinema attached to the mall. I forget what I saw that day but on the way out I saw this Monarch butterfly.
She had lost a forewing, it was cold, she was on the parking lot and probably dead. I still picked her up but she turned out to be very much alive. Her injuries were restricted to the forewings, there was no way she would ever fly again.
So I took her home. I kept her in a large container, the largest I had at the time, with plenty of soft paper towels around the edge. I would feed her honey - at first by leaving it in a bottlecap, but I decided it would be better to feed her by hand.
Her other forewing also fell off soon after I brought her home. She had a heart-shaped look with her remaining hindwings and so I named her Valentine. She lived through the month of November and into December. No eggs were laid so she could have been a male. Or I didn't have milkweed in her cage.
I have a habit of wanting to bring in misfit bugs. There's a whole bunch from throughout the years. A couple summers ago I saw a carpenter bee clinging on a chair on the porch. His wings did not expand properly, they were shriveled and useless. A thunderstorm approached, so I brought him inside. He lived for two months being hand fed honey as well. I knew he was a male by the bright yellow dot and big eyes he had. He would buzz if he were annoyed (the buzzing being from air being forced out of spiracles, not the movement of wings), but he would often sit still and lick honey off of whatever I had available. I never kept honey with him, because as with Valentine it could solidify and become a deadly sticky trap.
Another year I found a grasshopper at the Renaissance Faire with no hopper legs. Brought that one home and kept her like any grasshopper I've kept.
The most spectacular case however is a mantis that lost both of her fore arms very early on in life. Mismolts with mantises can be devastating and fatal, with mismolts being most common early in life as well as the final molt. A Chinese mantis I had been raising from nymph stage had her very second molt go wrong and her front arms were stuck in her old skin, one having been torn off with the other still trapped. There was no saving them. The best for her was to amputate and hope she gets enough food to survive her next molt. It was tricky at first, since I had to hand feed her and provide a tiny platform for her food to sit on so she can eat with no claws to hold her food. Eventually, she grew fat in the abdomen and rejected a meal, a few days later molted to her next instar. This time, she had her fore-arms back. They were clubbed, not quite complete, but growing back a little at a time. The next molt after that was more progress, but still not enough for her to hold her food. The next molt, she was larger, her forearms grew back enough that she could hold her food if it wasn't moving. By the time she reached adulthood she had normal arms and could catch like any mantis. In the wild she would have never reached that next molt.
It's somewhat sad, fair warning.
Late October of 2009, the weather was getting cold. Just a few days before Halloween I decided to go and see a movie at a local cinema attached to the mall. I forget what I saw that day but on the way out I saw this Monarch butterfly.
She had lost a forewing, it was cold, she was on the parking lot and probably dead. I still picked her up but she turned out to be very much alive. Her injuries were restricted to the forewings, there was no way she would ever fly again.
So I took her home. I kept her in a large container, the largest I had at the time, with plenty of soft paper towels around the edge. I would feed her honey - at first by leaving it in a bottlecap, but I decided it would be better to feed her by hand.
Her other forewing also fell off soon after I brought her home. She had a heart-shaped look with her remaining hindwings and so I named her Valentine. She lived through the month of November and into December. No eggs were laid so she could have been a male. Or I didn't have milkweed in her cage.
I have a habit of wanting to bring in misfit bugs. There's a whole bunch from throughout the years. A couple summers ago I saw a carpenter bee clinging on a chair on the porch. His wings did not expand properly, they were shriveled and useless. A thunderstorm approached, so I brought him inside. He lived for two months being hand fed honey as well. I knew he was a male by the bright yellow dot and big eyes he had. He would buzz if he were annoyed (the buzzing being from air being forced out of spiracles, not the movement of wings), but he would often sit still and lick honey off of whatever I had available. I never kept honey with him, because as with Valentine it could solidify and become a deadly sticky trap.
Another year I found a grasshopper at the Renaissance Faire with no hopper legs. Brought that one home and kept her like any grasshopper I've kept.
The most spectacular case however is a mantis that lost both of her fore arms very early on in life. Mismolts with mantises can be devastating and fatal, with mismolts being most common early in life as well as the final molt. A Chinese mantis I had been raising from nymph stage had her very second molt go wrong and her front arms were stuck in her old skin, one having been torn off with the other still trapped. There was no saving them. The best for her was to amputate and hope she gets enough food to survive her next molt. It was tricky at first, since I had to hand feed her and provide a tiny platform for her food to sit on so she can eat with no claws to hold her food. Eventually, she grew fat in the abdomen and rejected a meal, a few days later molted to her next instar. This time, she had her fore-arms back. They were clubbed, not quite complete, but growing back a little at a time. The next molt after that was more progress, but still not enough for her to hold her food. The next molt, she was larger, her forearms grew back enough that she could hold her food if it wasn't moving. By the time she reached adulthood she had normal arms and could catch like any mantis. In the wild she would have never reached that next molt.
