Many years ago we learnt that it is possible to get a stuck gecko off of gluey fly paper by soaking the attachment points in drops of cooking oil. Useful to know when the little fellows get it into their heads that the pile of flies on the pretty yellow tablecloth has been served up for their feast.
This morning I spent hours assisting Poodle (sometimes also known as a bat, from the species Frankie, in reality a mama praying mantis we've been feeding and employing as the habanero plant protector for a couple of months, who also just laid her first massive eggsack under the edge of our "garage" roof a few days ago) clean off some insanely sticky substance she had gotten herself covered with.
Poor thing was literally starving, glued to a leaf in the morning unable to use her front feet at all, since all of the (numerous and bending at weird angles - these guys are fascinating!!) joints were also stuck together. Guessing that the jelly was actually dried out slug goo, D used a tiny paintbrush to soak her legs in water a drop every couple of minutes until she got her joints moderately unstuck and some hope back into her. Snipped off the leaf and brought her indoors where the warmth and relative safety helped motivate her to keep trying to save herself. Toothpick, brush, several sets of tweezers, a pile of napkins and a fuckton of looking at minuscule things and patience - got most of the larger chunks of slug off in about 1.5 hours with no damage done. For the next few I sat at the kitchen table on which she was in turns committed to climbing up my shoulder, staring into my face, getting pissed off at all the goo and swinging clumped feet wildly about, gesticulating that she wants to be fed (which we eventually did while she was still sticky all over - oh what a mess, but she really needed the energy to keep going), getting obsessed with D's moving toes on the sofa half the room away or the shiny metal water bottle, and taking time to chew off some chunks of the slime and try to spit them out. That last turned out to be rather difficult, because - pure glue. Which is why we proceeded in a cycle of chew - try to spit - get mouth wiped by the corner of a tissue by me to remove the goop - soak leg - chew - spit - tissue -...
NOT what I expected to be doing for the entire morning today, but does explain why for a no apparent reason, I woke up convinced that I need to stay at home from lab today. Life.
Note - this is a very domesticated mantis, used to being close to us, getting hand-fed, sitting on people etc. There is absolutely no way a wild one (like Sneak currently living on the other side of our house) would have tolerated this treatment without completely panicking and seriously hurting herself in the process of trying to flee. Also, I had (clairvoyantly freed up) time, a good eyesight and enough patience. So now she is back on her pepper, basking in the sun and licking her hands clean of several rounds of sandwiches (the insanely harmful Chinese Grasshopper moths hell bent on (and succeeding in) destroying all of the native and food-producing plant life).
Cheers,
Hedi
