For those of you who have followed our blog for a while, you may remember a post about our first "creepy pet," a hermit crab named Crabby. For the record, we've never claimed that our son had the naming skills of someone like Carolus Linnaeus. Now that we live in a tiny Japanese apartment our options are again limited by all the previous criteria as well as the fact that we must now also factor in what constitutes a "pet" according to the rules and regulations of our apartment building. So this weekend when we were out shopping on Children's Day we came across a beetle starter kit which included the tank, soil, feeding tray, and one large and very shiny Rhinoceros Beetle. Needless to say, he came home with us.
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| Male Rhinoceros Beetle in nature. |
Keeping beetles as pets is very popular in Japan with almost every department store or 100 yen store selling some sort of bug hunting or keeping paraphernalia. In many ways it borders on the obsessive. Most of the time people simply go out and dig up their own grubs, which are quite easily found as Laura can attest to finding several large larvae the other day while she was weeding the local "sandbox."
On the way back home we encouraged Theo to come up with a name for his new pet by listing things in no particular order that were black. Thusly we have a beetle name "Coal." One bonus to keeping these specific types of beetles that unlike his crab, this particular pet can not pinch, bite or sting and so is virtually harmless which is I'm sure one of the reasons leading to it's popularity as a pet here in Asia.
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| Our newest acquisition. |
I am sure that with our imminent move to a larger space our menagerie will expand and we will keep you posted in regards to every new addition.
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