We need a dog. Without a pet, our house has become home to a rotating assortment of bugs. First, we raised butterflies. Now, we live with ladybug larvae. I think our family is single-handedly keeping Insect Lore — the store for all things buggy — in business.
Because April is National Poetry Month, I drafted “found poem” about ladybug larvae straight from the Insect Lore directions that accompanied the kit. (For a found poem, take a text, any text. You can subtract words, but not add any. Never rearrange the order. Changing tense, plurals, capitalization and punctuation is ok….see this “how to” post at 6 Teaching Authors.)
The Life of Ladybug Larvae
Eggs hatch.
Larvae search for food.
Shedding skin — molting,
Must store energy for change.
Don’t worry, in Ladybug Land, they have plenty of food.
So that’s it the life of larvae. Like the caterpillars before them, the larvae will eat and molt for a couple of weeks until they become pupae. And from those pupae shall emerge our caterpillars, we hope.
Kirsten W. Larson 
I like this idea of a ‘found poem’. Love your poetic summation of the life of a larva.
What fun also that your local aquarium has more Magellan Penguins arriving!
A found poem is about the extent of my poetic abilities right now. Thank goodness I “found” the genre.
The Found Poem thing is a cool idea! I’m sure you’ve had fun and learned a lot with your butterflies and ladybugs, and as bugs go, those are ones I could live with, but I agree – dogs make better pets 🙂
I’m dreaming of goldendoodles.
I have never heard of a found poem – what a cool idea! We have butterflies growing in our house right now too (my sister is growing them 🙂 )
I love ladybugs and caterpillars. They are great “pets.” Ants…not so much.
I like the poem idea too. I’ve heard it’s also fun to raise are stick insects!
Another friend recommended the praying mantis.
I second the praying mantis oothecae. Seriously, though, if you’re at all squeamish about ants, the mantids might not be a good fit. I pride myself on my steely composure when it comes to the natural world and exposing my kids to it, but the thousands of manitids pouring (literally) out of that egg case totally creeped me out. That being said… I’ve hatched them several times since. 😉 Glutton for punishment.
We keep Insectlore in business, too. We’re now just getting refill eggs and larvae since we have all of the enclosures. The dog and guinea pigs haven’t stopped the rotating assortment of critters around here. Good luck with that.
Great post, Kirsten, and great poem.
I’m always up for a challenge, but I appreciate the warning. Maybe I’ll see how I do with ants first. I might have nightmares about them escaping.
That is wonderful Kirsten, I saw the picture but must have been snowed under with blogs yesterday. What a delight!
That means a lot coming from a poet like you!
They have lots of aphids to eat perhaps 6000 of them? Hehe. I like your poem.
Too funny, Rena! It’s kind of fun to test the waters with poetry after not writing it in eons.