Wednesday 28 September 2005

catching up


I don't know if it is ever truly possible to catch up. Scientists say you don't really "catch up" on sleep. You can't gain back the hours you've lost. Basically, your body will sleep till restored/refreshed - if you let it. I guess I should say "In Summary" or something similar. Honestly, I'm not really concerned about the wording there - you know what I mean. *smile* I haven't posted a painting I like in a while so here is one to enjoy.

We've been doing the usual. A couple things here and there are a bit different. One of which is that we moved the spider we were observing in the boy's bedroom (ceiling) to a jar in the school room. I really didn't want itty bitty spiders swarming all over the room when her eggs hatched. *laugh* I did my best to get the sticky sac into the jar without damaging it, but I am not so sure I accomplished my mission. I did make sure to get the dead spider she had caught and rolled up so she would have food. The bottom of the jar is where I placed the "food" and the egg sac. I also placed two fern fronds in the jar to give some structure, added oxygen, and cover. I thought for the first two days that the stress of moving had killed her and then noticed she (I have been thinking of her as Charlotte *laugh*) moved the food and the egg sac up into a web she spun between the two fronds. A couple days later she added another, larger egg sac and the first one shriveled up. Yesterday, we caught a small cricket in the kitchen and fed it to Charlotte. She pounced on him and then zipped back up her web. The cricket just limped around for a long time....so we quite watching. When we checked again, she had the cricket up in her web and she was...well...you know..sucking the "juices" out. *giggle* Her abdomen has swelled considerably and this morning the cricket remains were dropped to the bottom of the jar. All in all, this spider is much more interesting than the funnelweb grass spider we caught a few weeks ago. *laugh* (we already let that one go.) We are hoping to get ahold of one of these fuzzy catapillars wiggling around here outside and give it lots of leaves and see if it spinns a cocoon or makes a chrysalis. (moth or butterfly) We never saw the leaves with eggs on them. Anyway - maybe next year we will order butterfly eggs and get to watch the whole process. I'd like to do the tadpole thing too - oh, and lady bugs...that would cool. We are supposed to observe earthworms right now, but I don't usually think of buying worms when I'm at the store...so I should put them on a list and stick it to the fridge. *laugh*
So far over the last couple years we've observed a tiny frog the size of my pinky nail, a tiny green anole lizard (both of which came in flower shipments to the florist shop my sister was working in and were the reason I stood out in the yard with a tiny aquarium fishnet "scooping" teensy tiny bugs for food while 7,8,&9 months prego *laugh*), a little grass snake, and a brown anole. Currently, as pets we have one goldfish (thank you Fall festival - I'm sure we'll get a few more this year), one silver catfish, and one Placo in our aquariums; we have one dog - Molly, a black Lab, and Gertrude, our Tokay Gecko. The boys would also like to add a fish, a bird or two, some rabbits, and a couple more hamsters (I have a black thumb for hamsters...just don't go there. *frown*), and about 20 guppies. I would like to get a turtle, and a little frog for the fish tank, more fish and a bigger tank. *laugh* What I think we will get tho, is just some more guppies - after we find a new home for the catfish - since he likes to eat all other small fish when the lights go out. (oh, and maybe a turtle. *big grin*)
That's all I have time to update....tune in next time to the same pet site, same pet time. *laugh* Yeah, that was corney...so what? *grin*

2 comments:

Mama Heffalump said...

You've been a busy bee! LOL! Spiders... ew! You have more tolerance for critters than I do! Lil Lumpy would just totally freak out! I tried to get her interested in doing a butterfly house this year, but nothing doing... *sigh*. Maybe next year!

Matt said...

You guys are regular arachnologists!