Louka's cricket

At Trishy and Johnny's place yesterday Louka found a handful of little cicada shells. She make a home for them in a box, but then wanted a live pet bug to live with them. So we hunted round the garden. The ladybird flew away, and the little stripy cockroach-like bug scuttled off. Then Trishy saw a dead leaf stuck to a living leaf on a tree and looking closer found a fat cricket. That suited Louka perfectly.

But it was too big for the cicadas' home, so we made a bigger box for it.

Museum

Today we took the gumnut back to the museum. I'd noticed a tiny grey-brown thing in the jar with it, but thought it was the stalk of the gumnut fallen off. Turns out it was the moth that had emerged. The museum naturalist took the gumnut and moth to the entomology department for identification, and took my details in case it turned out to be anything interesting - such as a new species. That would be cool!

Then we helped sort through the pile of droppings from the bottom of the stick insect tank for eggs. There were apparently four species of eggs to be found, but we only saw two - the Children's Stick Insect eggs that were beige and the shape of a small rice grain, and another (bother I've forgotten the name) that were brown, cylindrical and looked remarkably like all the poo they were amongst. We also found two tiny baby stick insects that had either escaped from the tank or had hatched from the eggs we were sorting.

We headed back across the road to Hyde Park to give Louka a run around, and ate a picnic lunch before going back inside. We got bitten by the virtual shark and crocodile and watched the real live baby crocs in the Surviving Australia exhibition. As usual we visited the dinosaurs and Kidspace and I bought Louka an emu stamp from the shop. And on the way home she fell fast asleep.