WHAT IS AN OOTHECA?

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I found this strange cocoon attached to a bush in my yard. I thought that would kill the bush so I removed the twig and brought it into the house to study it. It turned out that it was the egg sac of a praying mantis called an “ootheca.” Rather than hatch the babies in my house, I attached it back to the bush with a zip tie.

The mother mantis lays her eggs in the fall before the first freeze. She produces proteins that make a foam around the eggs and then harden into the protective ootheca. Each ootheca contains about 50-200 eggs. The mother dies after making the egg sac. Over the winter, the eggs develop into babies.

In the spring, when the temperature is around 70-80 degrees and humidity less than 50% for about two weeks, the babies hatch inside the ootheca.  Then they chew through the wall to get outside and eat small insects like aphids and fruit flies. If they don’t get out of the ootheca fast enough to eat, the bigger babies may eat the smaller ones. The babies are about 4mm (1/8 inch) long.

https://praying-mantis.org/what-do-baby-praying-mantis-eat/  This link shows someone feeding a fly to a baby mantis.

Praying mantis are carnivores. The adults eat grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, flies, bees, wasps, butterflies, gnats, and occasionally a small hummingbird or a small snake.

Another type of insect that makes and ootheca to protect the eggs is a cockroach.

 

 

 

 

Helen Keller’s Handwriting

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I was recently walking through an outdoor shopping area in downtown St. Augustine, Florida and discovered the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum. The “museum” was a little alcove sandwiched between two stores, hardly big enough to call a room. It displayed letters from famous people protected by thick glass. One letter immediately caught my eye because the penmanship was so perfect and distinct. And that letter was written by Helen Keller. So, how is it that a blind person had neater handwriting than me?

 

Helen Keller learned handwriting at the Perkin’s School for the Blind in Watertown, MA, a suburb of Boston. She later learned braille and used a braille typewriter to write letters. To read and write letters rather than braille, the school used Tactile Text which are letters embossed in paper.  This post shows an example of a tactile book:

https://www.perkins.org/tactile-books/#:~:text=Samuel%20Gridley%20Howe%2C%20director%20of,and%20at%20the%20Pennsylvania%20Institute.

Here is an example of tactile letters combined with braille:

https://www.perkins.org/what-did-helen-keller-use-to-read-and-write/

Here is a YouTube video showing devices that blind people use to keep their writing in a straight line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrk5fSUJA9o

Here is another YouTube video where a historian talks about Helen Keller learning to write:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIHFgYRKaCE

LUIS BETANZOS, MEXICAN ARTIST

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My mother-in-law gave us these two paintings (below) that had belonged to her mother. The paintings were signed “Betanzos.”  I did some research to find out about the artist.

Luis Betanzos (Herrara), 1907-1978, is a folk artist from Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. A folk artist is a self-taught artist without formal art training and Luis started painting when he was three years old. His father was a teacher and Luis became a grade school teacher. Children were a common subject of his paintings. He also taught classes about his painting techniques at the Academy of San Carlos.

He mostly did a type of painting called “gouache” (pronounced gwash). Gouache is defined by Google dictionary as “a method of painting using opaque pigments ground in water and thickened with a gluelike substance.” If you have an interest in gouache painting compared to watercolor painting, here is a good YouTube video showing the difference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2CZNPZLRPg

One of Betanzos primary students, Alfredo Guati Rojo, became a famous Mexican painter who worked with watercolors. His paintings are in the National Museum of Watercolors in Mexico City.

Luis Betanzos’ grandson has a collection of many of his grandfather’s paintings which he displays in a house in Cuernavaca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQDYH_zVtEw  (This video is in Spanish)

Betanzos’ grandson has been collecting money through a foundation to build a small museum to house his grandfather’s art, and also to make a documentary and a book about his grandfather’s life.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHK1_ZAJRiE  (This video is in English)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Turkey Day!

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Next week is Thanksgiving. Today, two wild turkeys were strutting across my front yard. One was shy and did not want to be photographed, but the other was a poser.

Wild Turkey

Go Hawk!

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In July, I posted a picture and video of a sick, injured baby hawk that my husband found near our house. We called Iowa Bird Rehab who came to get the hawk. This morning, I was delighted to see on Instagram that the red-tailed hawk is alive and well, and being moved to a different bird sanctuary that specializes in raptors.

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater

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I had two pumpkins ready to carve for Halloween. I sat them outside and the next day found this:

 

I saw a suspicious looking deer hanging around my yard, but I didn’t know how the deer was eating the pumpkin without knocking it off the ledge. Day # 2:

Many types of animals will eat raw pumpkin. The animals I have seen near my yard include: deer, raccoon, possum, groundhog and squirrel. Day #3:

Can you find the culprit in his photo?

Guilty as charged.

Day#4:

Season of the Sticks

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My daughter sent me a picture of a walking stick bug that was crawling on her window. Walking sticks are common but rarely seen because they live in trees and are camouflaged to look like sticks. There are thousands of species of stick bugs. Most of them live in tropical areas. They “naturally prune” trees. There are two main species in North America that like to eat the leaves of deciduous trees (especially oak, hazelnut, walnut, locusts, and cherry). In North America where the winters are cold, the bugs lay eggs on fallen leaves and then die when winter arrives. The kiddos hatch in the spring and climb the nearest tree. The picture below is Megaphasma (“big ghost”) dentricrus (“tooth leg”). Here is a video that tells more about these bugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dblhygB8inw

Fungus Schmungus #9

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I saw this mushroom growing in the grass on a small lawn of a hotel in Arkansas next to the parking lot. I believe it is a type of Ganoderma or Reishi mushroom. I have two other species of Ganoderma on this blog (Fungus Schmungus #2 and #6). I was not able to identify the species with certainty. There are two photos of this same mushroom on the internet posted on Reddit with one from Nebraska and one from Ohio. These posts also question the species.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/comments/os9ea7/found_in_eastern_nebraska_growing_out_of_a_lawn/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/comments/14t9slv/id_swmo_found_on_the_ground_near_what_i_believe/

Below is a photo of the mushroom which was the size of a small plate and a close-up of its skin.

Ganoderma