Manly the Mantis
Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2013 4:53 am
I had gone to a lovely bug fair and found a collection of Orchid Mantis's for sale. I immediately bought one and took the little guy home, along with a nice enclosure, a vial of flies, and a fake flowers stand.I have had the beautiful white male Orchid Mantis for a few months now. I felt so attached to him and loved him so much...He had gone through two molts just fine, and everything seemed to be going just fine. He suddenly stopped eating yesterday, and he started to get very wobbly to the point of not being able to stand on his own anymore. I was set for the worst,thinking it was his time, so I set him carefully into his enclosure and went to bed. I was pleasantly surprised this morning that he was in molting mode, so I went about my day. Later on when I got home, he was still molting when he should of been done hours ago. I searched up online what was happening and was devastated to learn that his molt had hardened to his body and that he was going to be unable to use his four legs and two arms along with moving his head until ultimately dying a long and agonizing death. He soon fell off the under part of one of the flowers and began twitching and flailing around which became too painful for me to look at. The hardest decision I had to make was to either put him into the freezer so he would fall asleep peacefully, or to have him die terribly over the course of several days. I decided to put him into the freezer, and after he passed away I dug him a small grave. The hardest part was to see there was no more life in his eyes when I was putting him into the ground...This just happened two hours ago and I've been crying almost non stop since it happened...I know it's just a mantis, but to see a living thing in so much pain was absolutely terrible...I also never got a picture of him because he was too small for my camera to focus on. It's always so hard to have a living thing die,he was just getting big and would of had such a longer life..
