A Bug's Life

Natalie is infatuated with bugs right now. Specifically, pill bugs and tomato bugs. She captures them, houses them in lid-less plastic containers, feeds them and waters them. I'm sure the tomato bugs are especially confused as to why they were plucked from their natural and desired habitat (our tomato plants) only to be fed their favorite food (tomato plant leaves from our tomato plants) 3 times a day by their captor. Consequently, the current pet tomato bug is soon to outgrow his Gladware. He's getting enormous and she's getting very attached.

We'll see how this plays out but I'm not hopeful it will end well for any of the parties involved. I'm actually most worried about the tomato plant that is being defoliated before it's produced a single fruit!

pill bug

tomato bug
(and lots of tomato bug poop)

colony of lucky pill bugs

By the time I got around to finishing this post, things changed. We did a little research online and it turns out "tomato bugs" are actually tomato horn worms (ick) and they'll turn into hawkmoths the size of hummingbirds if they have soil to dig into (they make their chrysalis in the soil). I'm not overly excited to see a moth the size of a hummingbird, but our budding entomologist sure is.

Corey helped Natalie upgrade the horn worm's digs and added a nice base of soil to dig in. Within 24 hours, he was subterranean. Now we just have to wait 2 to 3 weeks (an eternity for a preschooler) for him to emerge as a moth and hope to actually catch the action when he flies away (highly unlikely, but Natalie is very optimistic).

The new digs. The horn worm dug it...literally.

In addition to real live bugs, Natalie and Audrey love to play with this bucket of bugs that Corey brought home from a recent trip. Audrey was chewing on the huge, red, plastic scorpion on the drive home from the airport and if a neighboring motorist had seen her, we might have caused an accident!

We'll let you know when the giant moth emerges!