Roly Poly Biome

Every nature kid's childhood includes catching roly polies (aka pill bugs). I certainly passed plenty of sweaty hours in the Louisiana heat looking under logs, leaves and bark to find the cool little crawlies. So, when my little nature boy came home from camp (at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences) with instructions for a roly poly house to put in the garden, I was just as excited as he was.

The process was simple: Hollow out half a potato, put it in the garden, sprinkle with a little water, cover with leaves, then check after a few days to see if there are any pill bugs under the potato. It worked! Cool! So, I had an idea for an old candy jar we had in the shed. What if we did the exact same thing inside the candy jar? The pill bugs can't walk on glass, so they can't climb out. The lid is not air tight, so there will be plenty of air flow. The experiment began...

A little soil on the bottom...sprinkle of water...hollowed out potato half...leaf litter...some decorative sticks, moss, a pine cone. Looks good! Next, catch some new pets. We put the two pill bugs we had into the jar, then found a couple more. 

Over the next 9 months: The potato grew (which was cool), the pill bugs crawled around sometimes (but stayed hidden a lot of the time), we replaced the potato once (the new one grew, too), the moss dried up, some mold grew (we cleaned it out). A few days ago, we decided to freshen everything up. We weren't sure if there were any bugs still alive, so we caught some new ones. During the refresh, we found one roly poly balled up inside the jar. My son thought it was no longer on this mortal plane, so he decided to open the shell. When he tried to pry it open, legs started kicking! It was still alive! His name is Frank.

This roly poly biome (Minecraft reference, IYKYK) terrarium has been a fun project. My son has kept these "pets" in his room for months. This little bit of nature and natural processes kept close to observe has allowed us opportunities to talk about all sorts of awesome topics. Life, life cycles, death, decay, food, waste, evaporation, insect anatomy....so much. Thank goodness for Google.