Final farewells

[gynnyr]

To-day I came home from work and found my s. carolina Minerva in the bottom of her tank. She was right-side up, but laying very still. I gently lifted her with a piece of her scenery and she moved, but very, very slowly. She doesn't seem to have much by way of motor skills anymore and grasps only by chance. Her left claw won't open and her foot won't extend. She is very limp.

I removed her from her enclosure and misted her with some water. She drank the bit that fell on her mouth, but otherwise was disinterested. Her abdomen is large and still pulsing, albeit very slowly. I noticed she stopped eating a day or so ago and her crickets from the other night remain untouched.

She's alive, but it doesn't look like she's going to be perking up. This thread wasn't really looking for helpful hints on that front. Mostly I want to know what you folks do when this happens. I know most of you keep more mantids than individual care can warrant, but I am still rather new at this and she was my first. When they get to this point, do you let them go naturally? I know some of you freeze mismolted nymphs, but do you freeze those dying of old age as well? Do you attempt to hand feed them a last meal? Do you handle them one last time? And when they pass, what do you do? Do you toss them in the bin or do you keep them? I know some give them a proper burial at sea in the porcelain ocean.

As for myself, I carefully got her out of her tank and she's sitting on the back of my hand as I type. Sentimentality is getting the better of me it seems, and I want to have the last bit of time with her more personally that watching her lay in her tank or on my desk. Any conversation welcome, even if it's telling me to grow a pair, haha.

Also, if this is in the wrong part of the forum, feel free to move it. Since it deals with death and dying, I figured 'health' would be the best topic, but I could be wrong.

 

[Rick]

Old age sounds like. I just put them in the freezer for about 30 mins or feed them to one of my reptiles.

 

[Katnapper]

When my very first pet mantis, Lily, was dying of old age... to the point it was obvious she had almost no life left in her, I carefully placed her outside on top of the bare dirt of a large flower pot outside my front window by my computer desk. She never moved, and I kept her there so I could look at her whenever I pleased. It was very late in November, or maybe in December, at the time and cold. She stayed there and endured freezing temps, snow, and all... with me looking out at her preserved by the cold. To mourn, reminisce, celebrate her life here, or just to keep her memory near was why she lay in the pot until Spring came, and she started to deteriorate. Then I gave her an unceremonious burial with the yard litter during a clean up of the leftover leaves, bush trimmings, etc. I think the first one is always special, and holds a place in the heart like no subsequent ones.

Since then, I've frozen them, fed them to other mantids, and just let them die as they would in their cages. I still have one in the freezer, and one naturally air dried sitting on a shelf in the bug room. But most are either fed to other mantids or left to die in their cages to be put in the waste bin. I usually feel a twinge of sadness upon finding a dead or dying mantid nowadays... but the repeated experience of the inevitability of them dying lessens the sentimentality. This is probably a good thing, or I'd be a mess.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Ah yes. Death of the First Mantis. In my case Tom, a Stagmomantis limbata and the only one I ever named. I caught her in late October and she lived fiercely until the following April, when she died during the night (or perhaps by Dawn's Early Light). There's not much point in getting excited over the death of every mantis, you'd spend your life in mourning, but I must say that I sorely missed Tom for quite a while.

 

[cloud jaguar]

If you want to honor her memory you can :

1) bury her in the garden

2) pin and preserve her

3) buy casting resin and a mold and encase her forever

4) mummify her like the egyptians did

5) deposit her in a peat bog, or

6) viking funeral

 

[PhilinYuma]

On a point of procedure, Arkanis, I don't think that a female would be allowed a Viking Flaming Longboat Funeral. For all of their many virtues, the Vikings never did cotton on to Unisex.

 

[revmdn]

Aw, go with the Viking funeral anyway. If I see that they're getting bad I put them in the freezer. I have a little dirt patch on the side of my house that just got some new trees that I burry them in.

 

[charleyandbecky]

When my first mantis was near the end, I put him out on the hedge where I found the ootheca from which he hatched. I believed I saw him take off running, happy to be back in the outdoors. I have found so many ooths on that hedge that I like to think of him each time I find one.

The death of the first one is always the worst, I think, although I still feel sad with every one.

Rebecca

 

[hibiscusmile]

I like the other Rebecca's like to put them outside, kindof sad, free at last from the old bat! and dying to beat it all, thanks gonna go cry now... stupid smilies, no crying one.... :{

 

[gynnyr]

Thank you everyone who related your stories. I'm a little touched by how all of you remember your first, and relieved I'm not the only one who is sentimental. Thank you for all the recommendations too, I appreciate them. After talking it over with my finaceé, I think I've decided to spread her and keep her. Thankfully no one close to me thinks it's morbid or weird, haha. I read over the guide pinned on general mantid discussion and will be following that method, I think. She was a beautiful girl and I feel she should be admired and loved, even after she goes.

As an update on Minnie, she sat on my hand most of last night, save for a brief five minutes when I went to the bathroom. I put her in one of my empty cups for the night when I finally had to go to sleep and woke up this morning to her final moments. She's still hanging on, as of this moment, but she is scarcely moving. She's completely limp and only tries to stand when held still for a while in your hand. Her little body is very cold and her wings aren't staying folded in place. I've decided that following this post, I'm going to take her and put her in the freezer so she doesn't have to sit around waiting to expire. She's not my girl anymore, but just a shell, as they say.

It's not an especially good picture of her, but it's one that I like, and that I use for my icon here.

R.I.P. Minnie, you will be missed

 

[Katnapper]

For Minnie....

 

[charleyandbecky]

Minnie is beautiful. This is the second time I have cried while reading this thread.

Rebecca

 

[sbugir]

I'm sorry to hear Dooctor Marcus, we all remember out first.

 

[JoeCapricorn]

The first mantis I lost this year was a European mantis named Peridot, but the hardest loss was Emerald. She was my buddy.

 

[elf run1]

i like to let them go outside somewhere warm, sunny,and full of flowers

~i am sorry for your loss~