STICK INSECTS

Last year my son received four stick insects for Christmas. For those of you unfamiliar with these cute creatures, they used to be on display in most classrooms when I want to school, albeit in a tank. They served two purposes as far as I can see. Firstly they made children less afraid of creepy crawlies as the teachers made the kids hold them. Secondly, they gave people like me something to look at when the teacher’s words were going right over my head. Not many schools will take them in now as they might escape and wreak havoc with the cleaning staff. Anyway, the stick insects arrived at our house along with a custom built container made from perforated plastic to house them in.

Stick insects are hermaphrodite so they do not need a male or female to produce eggs. And produce eggs they did, each insect has the capacity to lay around 300 of them. I couldn’t bear to see any of them thrown out with the compost so over the six months they were laying I carefully collected them up and put them in a container. I didn’t really think of the consequences though I must admit. We are now the proud carers of at least one hundred of the sticky things and the numbers have been growing steadily for a few months now as at least three are born every day. We have had to make alternative arrangements for many of them. Big glass jars and goldfish tanks are all being used to keep them happy. We have had a bit of trouble with them escaping though. You cannot put your shoes on without one hanging off the shoelace. We have them on all of the houseplants, on the washing up scaling the walls and even in the car clutched to the windscreen. We tried to feed them to our pet gecko but he won’t touch them. The reason for this is that the stick insects diet apart from our houseplants is either brambles or privet. We feed ours privet and this shrub is very poisonous to most creatures so the gecko isn’t having any of it.

YOU TOO COULD HAVE THESE INSECTS AS PETS
Stick insects do make great pets though and are very easy to look after. If you don’t keep the eggs and replenish the stocks the remaining insects live up to one year under normal conditions. I hope that I haven’t put you off them because we are offering you the chance of acquiring some of these creatures for your own house or school. At a specialist growers the insects are sold at about five euro each. We are offering them to you at no cost whatsoever! (How am I doing with the sales pitch?) All you need to do is to look after them responsibly.

LOOKING AFTER YOUR STICK INSECT

Tank. A fish tank will do, the taller the better though as they like to climb.

A lid for the tank. Very important if you don’t want them all over the house. If there isn’t a lid then you can make one out of a pair of old tights.

A constant supply of brambles or privet. We are lucky around here as there is loads of it. (One supplier in England are charging €8 for a carrier bag of privet hedge cuttings) it’s a pity we can’t get away with that!

Water sprayer. The insects like a drop of water every day in the form of a spray.

Care. The other requirement of course is to care for the creatures and tend to them for a couple of minutes every day.

Environmental.