New Pet

I was gone all day, attending the Wildlife Center of Virginia's Call of the Wild Conference. I attended largely in order to earn 6 hours of continuing education which all of us who volunteer need in order to be permitted by the VDGIF (Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries) - which regulates everything to do with Virginia's wildlife, including wildlife rehabilitation. There were some interesting subjects covered by interesting people. I think it's rather silly that those of us who just help at the Center have to do that - it's not like we're rehabilitating animals at our homes by ourselves, we're just helping hands at the Center. But - whatever. I do as I'm told.

Meanwhile, when I got home The Husband told me a story of having stepped out onto the front porch and nearly stepped on a praying mantis. He thought it was dead, brought it inside, and left it lying on the kitchen counter. A little while later he looked at it again and discovered it was slightly moving. He held it in his hands and warmed it up and lo and behold it regained consciousness and although he put it on a plant on the counter, it was pretty soon climbing up the edge of a window. Sure enough when I got home, there it was in the kitchen in the corner of a window up near the ceiling, looking hale and hearty! So I took it upstairs and put it in my garden window in the bathroom up there. I explained to The Husband that it is the natural course of things for the big praying mantis to be freezing to death at this time of year. He said "but then how are there new ones?" so I explained that she has laid her eggs and in the spring new tiny ones will be born and grow up to be big ones, who will lay their eggs and... etc. "Oh." But anyway, he doesn't want her to be outside freezing to death, so instead she'll be inside dying of old age, I guess. We'll see what develops.

I think this story is both sweet and rather silly. So, it being Saturday...