As many of you know, Courtney has had a pet grasshopper for over two months. A couple of weeks ago, I caught another one for her on the front sidewalk, now she has two. We went to Petco one night and got her their own terranium and now she drags that around everywhere and she loves those grasshoppers! (I think the penguin phase may be going to the side and the grasshoppers are taking over!). Courtney will talk to them, read them books, and they even join us for science experiments!
A couple of days ago, we noticed something in her terrarium. It was this pink thing that was about an inch long and looked like foam. It also had little things in it that looked like little pieces of rice. We weren't quite sure what they are. It didn't look like poop and we knew it had to come from the grasshoppers. We also knew that one grasshopper was a male and the other was a female. We figured that the female had laid eggs, but we weren't quite sure. We tried to look grasshopper eggs up on the Internet, but didn't really find anything.
Yesterday we went to the zoo and I told Matt that the people who work in the Butterfly Pavillion are really knowledgable about bugs and that we should ask them, so we did. The person there said they are grasshopper eggs and they will probably hatch in 3-5 months. He also said that the mama grasshopper will probably die. Most grasshoppers freeze to death before winter- it is just how it is.
We were also worried about what we were going to feed these little insects all winter. Matt and I were kind of stumped because Courtney just feeds them grass. What do we feed them when the grass dies??? We asked the guy yesterday at the zoo and he said that we could feed them lettuce all winter. That solved that problem.
Anybody want some pet grasshoppers in about 6 months??
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