Cootie Catcher

Hey ya'll 

So in case you missed it (and I think I mentioned this at the end of the Keric post), I set up a wood lice trap yesterday night in hopes of snaring more of those delightful little crustaceans for my culture. The trap is really quite a simple contraption and consists of nothing more than a plastic container that has been half-buried in a fairly deep hole that I have dug in the ground. Typically the rim of the container should be no taller than the level of the soil and around this I placed four small rocks to hold up an even bigger rock that would pretty much shelter the opening of the container from view.

Wood lice, you see, like dark and covered spaces (I'm sure they feel the most safe there) and so, when the sun rises and they are forced to retreat back to the covers of the undergrowth, I'm hoping they will take a look at my rock and scurry over for cover only to fall into the plastic holding chamber below!!! To entice some of them further, I even put in a slice of carrot.  They have small little feet which are terrible at climbing and could never possibly hope to scale the sides of the container in order to escape. As you can see, the trap is really quite ingenious in its simplicity and all I really need to do is leave the container overnight and return in the morning to find my little hordes of captured woodlice!

AND IT WORKED!!! I returned to the spot this morning (or rather, very early on in the afternoon) and overturned the rock to find my trap positively crawling with all sorts of small little creatures. Of course there were wood lice, but I could also detect various other animals as well. I decided to do a species count and found that in just one night I had managed to catch 

• 20 wood lice (Armadillidiidae) 
• 7 small unidentified beetles
• 1 wolf spider
• 5 small snails (possibly Achatinidae)
• And one juvenile centipede that appeared to have only just molted in the trap

Of all the creatures, I only kept the wood lice and the centipede (I would like to see how large it can grow to be) and released the others which were of no use to me. I did set up the trap again though. I'm just abuzz with anticipation to check tomorrow, what might lumber in tonight!!!

Wood lice galore!!! The toadlets will feast tonight!!! 

Cheers,
Cyren

Cooties!!!

Hey ya'll!!!

I've got Cooties!!! And not the imaginary kind that members of the opposite sex are supposed to have when they are of below a certain age, nor the makes your head itch either. Rather, the kind of cooties I've got, are the ones that one would normally find in pieces of rotting logs, or perhaps more literally "under a rock!"

I got up rather early today, out of necessity more than anything else really, but found that it was a particularly refreshing and chilly morning that I did not quite want to go back to sleep. Instead, I head out to my favorite spot of the house, The Garden (second only to my room) and decided to poke about a little bit under the rocks and pots to see what I might find. It must have gone on for hours!!! Armed with nothing more than my field journal, collecting jars and a soft paint brush (I use this to handle small creatures without any of the danger of my clumsy human fingers accidentally closing too hard upon one of them) I must have spent hours digging and poking and nosing about the soil!!! Indeed the air was so calm and cool I barely even noticed the time passing.

As it turned out, the underside of rocks are homes to all manner of creatures that seemingly coexist in such small and confined spaces. One particular rock unearthed a colony of ants. While this discovery greatly interested me, the ants themselves, rather objected to this. I replaced the rock briefly, hoping that I did not cause them undue stress. Over the course of the morning, I found other similarly interesting sights (another rock I picked up revealed a fat and grumpy centipede that reared up and waved its poisonous claws in my direction. I replaced this rock rather hastily!) but the most numerous and endearing of these secretive creatures were perhaps the little wood lice.

Although some species of woodlice superficially resemble pill millipedes, they are in fact an entirely different order of creature altogether and are really crustaceans (like crabs and shrimps) that have adapted to live entirely terrestrial lives! They do not breathe through spiracles like most other invertebrates do but instead have a series of trachea-like lungs situated somewhere in the nether regions of the woodlouse. These "lungs" need to be constantly moistened if they are to continue working which is why woodlice are commonly found only where moisture is abundant or the air, humid. Needless to say, I collected quite few. The lice, I felt, would be wonderful additions for my terrariums where they can recycle organic matter and waste products of the larger insects. Not to mention, they have also come to provide a steady stream of live food for my toadlets. 

The woodlice can curl up into a sphere when frightened, which helps me narrow the species down to Armadillidae. 

Larger species of woodlice are apparently, wonderfully delicious "replacement" for prawns in any seafood dish. 

Cheers,
Cyren.