Small Creatures
This house is always full of the chirping of crickets, which live in a special tank upstairs (which I call a cricketarium, though that is not really its name.) Luckily they are unaware that their short and merry lives will end when they become food for the leopard geckos.
Anyway, that's where they live when they're not escaping and finding their way to anywhere warm and chirping a lot and being scooped up by me and put back in the cricketarium.
Also upstairs in a tank live the Giant African Land Snails. They eat dampened paper ("no, m'lud, the snails ate the evidence") and dandelion leaves and suchlike. These, you will of course remember, were a wedding present to Olli and Gareth from the owners of the excellent Silent World aquarium in Tenby.
They were babies then. Now they're not, they're huge. Well, huge for snails that is - - several inches long. And when Olli was cleaning out their tank the other day she found that they had laid eggs, and that some of the eggs have hatched - - so we have some tiny babies, the size of a grain of rice. I can hear you saying "Aaaaaaw" from here.
I can see an interesting future where our house is crammed with tanks and tanks of Giant African Land Snails. They are edible, so I suggested to Olli that she should sell some of the babies to her student friends and that they should farm them for food, feeding them on essays that failed to make the grade.
Finally, for my Small Creatures survey, what's with the wasps in the bathroom? Six yesterday and five this morning. I am not keen on wasps and I don't know where they're coming from. I know where they went though: - out of the window with loud cries of "Death to the German Invader!" Quite why our family shouts that at wasps I'm not sure, but I think the Communist began it sometime during the Second World War.
I find it hard to love wasps.
That's enough of the Small Creatures and I have posted no photographs so as not to horrify anyone.
And today I've been to the seaside! More of that tomorrow.
Anyway, that's where they live when they're not escaping and finding their way to anywhere warm and chirping a lot and being scooped up by me and put back in the cricketarium.
Also upstairs in a tank live the Giant African Land Snails. They eat dampened paper ("no, m'lud, the snails ate the evidence") and dandelion leaves and suchlike. These, you will of course remember, were a wedding present to Olli and Gareth from the owners of the excellent Silent World aquarium in Tenby.
They were babies then. Now they're not, they're huge. Well, huge for snails that is - - several inches long. And when Olli was cleaning out their tank the other day she found that they had laid eggs, and that some of the eggs have hatched - - so we have some tiny babies, the size of a grain of rice. I can hear you saying "Aaaaaaw" from here.
I can see an interesting future where our house is crammed with tanks and tanks of Giant African Land Snails. They are edible, so I suggested to Olli that she should sell some of the babies to her student friends and that they should farm them for food, feeding them on essays that failed to make the grade.
Finally, for my Small Creatures survey, what's with the wasps in the bathroom? Six yesterday and five this morning. I am not keen on wasps and I don't know where they're coming from. I know where they went though: - out of the window with loud cries of "Death to the German Invader!" Quite why our family shouts that at wasps I'm not sure, but I think the Communist began it sometime during the Second World War.
I find it hard to love wasps.
That's enough of the Small Creatures and I have posted no photographs so as not to horrify anyone.
And today I've been to the seaside! More of that tomorrow.
posted by Daphne at 12:50 am
2 Comments:
I'm not so good with small creatures. In general, things smaller than babies, cats or dogs. Although baby cats and dogs are gorgeous.
I don't particularly mind the crickets - I leave them alone and they don't bother me. And the Giant African Land Snails are in tanks so no trouble to me. But wasps?! Oh dear, along with all biting/stinging insects, they are definitely no friend to me so please keep putting them out the window (glad you don't kill them - I may not like them but murder is not good - of course the freezing temperatures outside will probably do them in so I suppose it's assisted suicide).
I'm happy with anything except spiders. Please don't tell us you keep a couple of tarantulas in the airing cupboard!!
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