"Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete change." - From Peter Pan WHAT? - My new pets are a couple of Extatosoma tiaratum. Sometimes called "Macleay's Spectre" or the "Australian Giant Prickly Stick Insect". In Finnish they are called Kummitussirkka. I like the name "Leaf Ladies", which is what my friend, who gave them to me, calls them.        Just days old, my babies are part of this gathering. Leaf Ladies start off life looking and acting more like ants than the large docile beings they end up as.        At around two months old, they are barely the size of my thumb. When full grown however they may be as long as my hand.        Leaf Ladies are strict vegetarians and only eat a small variety of plants. Blackberry and Wax Myrtle are on the menu today.        After molting, Leaf Ladies emerge from their old skin almost twice their previous size. As seen in this picture, the two on the right have just molted while the one on the left is just days away from shedding her old skin.        When young, Leaf Ladies shed their skin about once a month. A tear rips in their chest area and they slip out head first. Here's the only pic, that turned out halfway decent, of Noxi when she was almost done shedding her skin. She was the only one of the Ladies that molted while we were awake.        Though they are very active when held, for the most part they just hang around upside down on the bottoms of the leaves or on the screen at the top of the habitat.        While they show very little interest in watching movies or TV in general, they are not above waving at a celebrity when the occasion arises. Especially not one who reminds them of their mother.        While it may look like an old fashion rumble (fight), Leaf Ladies Versus the Walking Stick, in actuality they all live peacefully in the same habitat and are really more upset at the fact the lid that they were hanging from has been turned upside than the proximity of the Walking Stick.        No it's not a new Indiana Jones movie, but the Leaf Ladies were prominently featured in a previous installment: "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". In fact the first bug that Willie Scott sees in the Temple tunnels is a full grown Leaf Lady attached to her hand as she turns it over. There are also many Leaf Ladies in the scene, including many covering the hole Willie has to put her hand through to flip the switch to save Indy and Short Round.        Here, one of the Leaf Ladies re-enacts the famouse scene from Indiana Jones using my Willie Scott action figure.        Getting ready for his next scene, Fawkes (from Harry Potter) gets his make-up touched up by Isis.        Isis uses the laptop to surf EBAY looking for a nice bug carrier so she can go visiting.        Nefr tends to find the strangest sleeping positions. Usually she hangs upside down bent in half with her tail almost touching her head. In this picture (to the left) however she is asleep in almost a ball, and quite happy there.        Here is one of the Ladies just hanging out on the top of the habitat. You can see one of her little round wings. With their final molts they get their wings. While they can move the wings a little bit (though rarely do so), the wings aren't anywhere big enough to fly with.        Here is one of the babies. After their first molt, they begin to look like miniature Leaf Ladies as opposed to little ant like critters.        Now that Isis has had what might be her last molt, here is a comparison so you can see how large she is compared to her first picture. Unfortunately my camera focused on the background rather than Corey's arm, but at least you get the idea.        My mom took Isis over to the aquarium to meet her fish. I swear Isis' eyes almost, pardon the pun, bugged out when she saw them. She looked all over real fast (like she does when she sees something interesting for the first time) and then grabbed the aquarium glass and didn't want to let go. She just sat there and watched the fish swim.        A couple of the ladies visit the christmas tree. At first they didn't want to be put on it, being a fake tree they must not have liked the texture of it. Once on the tree though they both were mezmerized by the blue-to-white color-changing lights and just hung there and stared amazed at them while I took pictures.                 Click here to e-mail me! This site was established on August 6th, 2005. This page © Copyright Scott Watson 2005.