Redojiimu, our hercules beetle, died last week. Sidra was playing with his friends when he noticed that Redojiimu hadn’t moved for sometime. Although he knew that Redojiimu wouldn’t live long once he turned into a beetle, Sidra was hoping that Redojiimu would stay with us at least until autumn, so he was sad. We were very sad too. Redojiimu came to our house as a tiny little larvae when Sidra was still in first grade. He’s now in third grade. Two years might be a short time for us adults, but for kids at Sidra’s age, two years is quite a […]

There were some crackling sound from inside our larva box when we woke up this morning. My husband peeked inside the box and found this huge beetle! After two years of waiting, our larva has emerged as a huge Hercules beetle last night! I completely missed his pupa stage, which is in between the larva and imago (last stage development of an insect). In Pupa stage, he would stop eating and silently begin the metamorphosis process. This is the most delicate stage, so maybe it was a good thing that we didn’t disturb him at that time. The tip of the horn […]

Sorry if you don’t like our cute pet! It’s time to change the soil again for our Colombian Hercules larva. Today was such a shiny day, it was nice because the larva wouldn’t get exposed too long to the cold autumn weather. We keep the larva in a big plastic case filled with special soil that contains food for the larva. It would then eat the soil until the case is about half-full or less, and then we change the soil with new one. It’s the 4th soil change already, the last one was about 4 months ago. The larva hasn’t grow […]

Warning: wriggly thing pictures ahead! This morning, the three of us woke up in excitement  because today was the soil change day for our larva! It can only be done every 3-4 months, so this occasion is something that we are always waiting for. It has been almost a year since we bought the larva, and today is the third soil change. The larva is growing slower now, the size is just a little bit bigger than the last time (March 2010), but the body is  a lot firmer. It also moved a lot when I held it, and when […]

You know, we actually have pet in the house, although I rarely talked about it. But we’ve almost never seen it around because it is living in a plastic box buried under a heap of soil. In fact, it hardly can be called a pet at all, because we can’t, you know, pet it or play with it. The only thing we can do is watching it while it’s growing. Anyway, meet our pet: a Colombian Hercules beetle larva! Sidra calls it ‘Herakuresu’, which is simply how the word ‘Hercules’ said in Japanese. He’s crazy about all these kabuto (rhino […]