Eats plants
The kids played Dungeons & Dragons at Geek Retreat in Aberdeen yesterday. This was their second time playing and they love it. They went with friends this time which would have made it even better. On Saturday afternoons you can book in for a beginner's session and learn how to play. Their first game was… Continue reading D&D, cargo bike, summer, and gardens
For several years now I have been quite interested in entomophagy which means eating insects. I've started buying insect dog food for the dogs we borrow and this week I bought a packet of ground buffalo (buffalo is a type of beetle, also known as mealworm) from a Welsh company called Bug Farm Foods. It… Continue reading Eating insects
Sustainability in dog food is becoming a thing. The dogs we look after always come with their own food which their owners provide but I feel a bit depressed giving regular dog food to dogs. We know how unsustainable livestock farming is and we're already consuming beyond our resources just to satisfy our meat-heavy diet… Continue reading Insect dog food
I can only get to the allotment once per week but it changes so much with each visit. My courgettes are cropping in abundance. I'm not sure what to do with them all. I also got my first tomatoes and cucumbers of the season. I have heaps and heaps of kale. More than we could… Continue reading Bees and toads
I've been waiting for my rocket to produce seeds for months and months and months and finally some seed pods have emerged. I'm not sure how or why it took so long because it has been flowering for ages now and I just assumed the seeds would be in the flowers but they weren't. Today… Continue reading Rocket seeds and stick insects
I thought this story was a hoax at first but I Googled it and found reputable sources like the New Yorker, ABC Science, BBC, and Science Daily. There's a nice symmetry to the thought that one of the causes of climate change - livestock farming - could also bring about its demise. Livestock farming produces… Continue reading Meat allergy tick is spreading thanks to climate change
I'm a murderer. I killed dozens of our pet stick insects yesterday with my bare hands, squishing them into green slime. I felt pretty awful about this and had nightmares last night about mistreating pets. I realise this self-imposed guilt is irrational because I frequently squish insects in my greenhouse. Why do I feel guilty… Continue reading Stick insect abortions
I've got a population crisis in my stick insect habitat. It's swarming with them now and there's a range of sizes so this is more than just one lot of offspring. They're breeding like rabbits and I'm not sure what to do with them all. There are so many that I can't take the dead… Continue reading Population crisis and hairy legs
Last week I discovered lots of little baby stick insects in our stick insect habitat. We started with four nymphs which I purchased on eBay last year and they ate lots of leaves and grew and they must have laid eggs at some point because now there are babies. I'm not even sure how many -… Continue reading The stick insects have been fornicating
I had dogs for 13 years and before that a cat. When Freud died a few years ago it was such a harrowing experience that I decided I couldn't go through it again. Not soon, anyway. I still miss him and our other dog Zeki. Now we've got four stick insects and these creatures are very low maintenance… Continue reading Our pets: stick insects
George Monbiot has written an article about how he recently ate roadkill: a grey squirrel. I think that if we must eat animals then roadkill is probably the most ethical of all the options since the animal is dead anyway. But in his article he describes how he was admonished for doing this by people… Continue reading On eating roadkill
Ben is outraged that I've taken possession of two and a half chests of drawers for my clothes and left him with only half a chest of drawers. On the surface of it this might seem unfair but Ben wears the same outfit everyday so he really doesn't need more than half a chest of… Continue reading Leaf insects and other things
My children were fighting over dead flies yesterday. They came charging into my office arguing over why Elizabeth should have three dead flies and Daniel only one. I looked at them in disbelief and with more than a little exasperation said, "Children, you're fighting over dead flies!!!". Daniel immediately realised the absurdity of the situation and… Continue reading The Fly
Elizabeth has acquired a pet. She's called him fluffy and given him some food and a blanket. She tried to give him some toys as well but fortunately I managed to talk her out of that. Fluffy is a cockroach. Here he is, in his home:
I haven't written anything on my blog in almost a week which is a long time for me. But I've been really busy this past week and this is going to continue for about another month or so. It's a very enjoyable and challenging busy though, so I'm not complaining. This morning we overheard Elizabeth,… Continue reading Monster machines, serial killers and bugs
I'm an impatient person. I also relish change. I'm not one of those people who fears it and who rejects everything new. Perhaps this is partly why I have no objections to implementing the changes needed to stem global warming and am perplexed why so many people fight against them. I read this great tweet… Continue reading In praise of change
When my sister and I were little, our Thai nanny fried up some grasshoppers for us to eat. I can't remember what they tasted like but I remember the experience well: it was fun and exciting. We caught the grasshoppers and she cooked them. There is a word for the practice of eating insects. It… Continue reading Insects, anyone?
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