Crunchy munchies

I discovered tonight that fly traps can serve more than one purpose. Assuming that they actually attract flies, they can be useful for attracting stick insects that feed on flies.

I put this trap up on the weekend, and after a spot of hot weather today (39 in the backyard, 34 in the office), the trap gunk finally brewed up enough to start attracting flies. The trap had about two flies in it this morning, and about 100 by the time the sun went down.

At about 5pm, I noticed that a stick insect had taken up residence near the entrance, and was snaring the odd fly that approached the trap. Here he/she is having a munch on a freshly caught fly. Marvelous. If the trap doesn't get them, sticky will. I wandered out for a look every 15 minutes or so and sticky was still grabbing flies and chomping away. Last I saw, sticky had nabbed a really big fat sucker that had the added bonus of carrying maggots. Munch, munch, munch and out pop a few maggots. Great, just before dinner too.

The most frustrating thing was trying to take close-up images of sticky with the fancy digital camera. I couldn't get the blasted thing to focus on sticky - it kept on focusing on the lid of the fly trap or on the tomato plants behind, but not on sticky. How I wished for a manual focusy thing like a good old fashioned SLR camera. I was frustrated enough to pull out the instruction book in order to find out how to do manual focusing, but haven't had the chance to read that chapter yet. Knowing modern gadgets, it won't have any "manual" options anymore. The computer knows best.

Like hell.

So I was unable to post any nice close up photos of sticky chewing on a fly. You'll just have to trust me when I say that sticky is chewing on a fly in these two photos.

Assuming sticky is half smart, I might be able to get some more snaps tomorrow in manual mode - if I can find the manual mode.

Somehow I don't think the flies are going away.