Mystery moth

We were at a park down by the river a couple of nights ago. Ms Dragon made friends with this rather photogenic moth.

I haven't been able to find out what sort of moth it is. A Google image search did turn up one single photo that is the spitting image of this, but there was no discussion about what type it may be.

Another use for a grasshopper enclosure.

Cat TV

The cat spends hours with her nose up against the wire. Sometimes she even takes a nap that way.

JazDragon's insect quote of the day.

Empirical observation with empathy:

"It must be awful being a male grasshopper. When they're mating, their abdomens get stuck together and he has to put up with being dragged all over the place by the female."

Moulting Mishaps

The grasshoppers are still going strong. It turns out they're pretty easy to keep.

We keep them next to a large window that gets a fair chunk of morning sun. Every day, before she heads off to school, Ms JazDragon puts in a handful of fresh-picked grass. The grass dries out through the day and we haven't taken any out (explanation of why later), so there's a rather large mound of dried grass accumulated on the bottom. When Ms Jaz gets home from school, they get another handful of grass. We don't have any water in there, but we give it all a good spray twice a day and that seems to be enough to keep them happy and hoppy.

For some reason we were under the impression that grasshoppers attach their eggs to the grass. That is why the dried grass was never removed; Ms Jaz was worried that we would be throwing the babies out with the bathwater grass. More recently, we read that grasshoppers lay eggs in soil, so Ms Jaz put some dirt in a tray, sprayed it and tucked it under some of the dried grass. There have been some definite sightings of 'adult' activity, so chances are that there are eggs in there somewhere.

The males appear to be smaller than the females. That is just from the observation that when the above-mentioned 'adult' activity is going on, it always seems to be a smaller hopper on a larger one.

In the last round of moulting there seemed to be more mishaps than last time, a couple of deaths and a few legs gone missing. I don't know whether that's because of anything we're missing out on providing in their habitat, or whether it's just what happens when you're a grasshopper. We do come across plenty of hoppers in the wild, missing a big leg or two.

This is one of the fatal mishaps:

Out to the right of the photo is the abdomen, that zig-zaggy thing on top of the abdomen is a misshapen wing. The large hind legs seem to have come off with the skin. The old skin is still covering the head. The hopper was still alive at this stage. The freakiest thing about it though, was this:

The leg with the arrow pointing to it seems completely detached from the body, but it kept moving!