Latest arrivals

This is one of our latest arrivals - an orchid mantis. Not a good picture, but good enough to get an idea. It is small, about 1 cm tall, and it looks just like a flower.

We have two, a male and a female. They need to be kept apart until they are ready to mate, or they would eat each other. This was a bit of a challenge because we only had one empty vivarium. So I put one in a perspex container inside the vivarium - thats why the photo is a little fuzzy.

When they arrived I started to clean out the vivarium, thinking it was empty, when I noticed lots of little creatures in the debris at the bottom. I thought nothing of it for a couple of minutes until I realised they were the off-spring of the previous inhabitants - locusts! If just I'd thrown them in the bin who knows what might have happened... However, I now don't need to search for food for the mantis... until the locusts get a bit bigger than them - if any survive theat long.

The one inside the perspex tube gets an aphid covered sprig of something from the garden everyday.

Today the male was sitting on the outside of the tube - they were eying each other up - but whether they saw each other as a potential snack or as a future mate - or both - who knows.

We discovered capricorne des maison in some of the woodwork that makes the terrace. They are like woodworm, only about 100 times bigger. They're pretty serious if left untreated. So, what to do? The only cures are pretty nasty. I've been recommended Pentachlorophenol which, as it says in the report, is restricted to specialist use in the US. It is widely available in France. For now, I continue to look for a solution. There is around this situation a central issue in our relationship with insects and the wider environment. We can't kill insects without side effects - sometimes serious. On the other hand we can't just ignore them - unless we are ready to tear down the terrace at some point - and build the next out of metal and glass. Mmm, there's a thought!

An insect in the news: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5100950.stm). It doesn't seem very important at first glance - who's going to miss a beetle? Why is biodiversity so important? This article sums it up: http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec12/b65lec12.htm#Future_Options.