Christmas presents for my insect friends
Few people realise how large my whanau is. I'm lucky to have a loving wife, a few kids plus partners and now three grandkids. Then there's the extended lot in the Netherlands and it soon ads up in terms of Christmas presents; especially for a Dutchman! 
But this is really only the beginning.
In my garage I keep a whole menagerie of spineless animals that do a great job during the year in classrooms and teacher training courses. Invertebrates that have untold stories attached to their little bodies and their little lives. The stories, though, are huge as each species performs significant ecosystem services.
At Christmas I'd like to give these little helpers something special too, just to say "thank you" for the memories and their commitment to spreading the message about the operating manual of Planet Earth.
My huge, Northland millipede, extracted from a rotten log near Maungaturoto, may enjoy a fresh lot of organic material: some black humus and perhaps a few kilometers of fungal thread (mycelium). The protein therein builds new body parts and regenerates some skin after the next moult.For dessert I may even find it some fresh excrement of large huhu grubs.
Carabid beetles always feature in my line-up of captive teachers. In Canterbury we are blessed with some impressive dark, iridescent green insects that dwell under logs and stones in many a garden with shade, shelter and short, native vegetation. These guys and gals are predators of a range of small invertebrates, but they especially love to hunt small slugs and snails: yes, escargot! I've noticed that, just like humans, they prefer the succulent young specimens over the tough old adult prey, so my Season's Greetings will most likely come with a fresh batch of mollusc eggs, au naturel.
Strange as it may seem, I also have a large, dark techno-spider that lives in a huge entangled web of pure white silk. Most young students and their teachers will have met Boris-the-Banded-Tunnelweb, although they may have never seen it feed in the class room. Boris doesn't like disturbances and he certainly doesn't like travelling in planes with constant vibrations of engines and lots of noise and movement. He'll sit quietly deep in his silken tunnel, where he feels safe. In the dead of night, in my garage, he wanders around his enclosure, silking here and silking there, repairing broken tunnels and web-like trampolines on the floor. When you give him a moth he'll touch the trampolines to gauge if the mini vibrations are caused by friend or foe... or even prey! Those vibrations travel through silk beautifully - it's like a sensitive telephone line that delivers crucial information. Boris will receive a few cockroaches - he loves a good hunt!
Tree weta are probably the most efficient tools in Environmental Education. Their stories span a wide range of the curriculum and provide many excellent teaching moments. They usually live in small groups in large containers, where they'll feed on fresh leaves and buds, some fruit and flowers, a carrot, an apple plus a few dog biscuits. The tiny wetalets (babies) are just delightful and a great tool to overcome entomophobia. Seeing they all love fresh protein for breakfast in the evening, I may steal some jelly meat from the next door neighbour's cat bowl.
The meanest predator in my garage is a giant native centipede. This top carnivore lives in a large tank under an old rotten log. He has a nice, cool tunnel in the soil where the relative humidity is constant and in the higher range, to avoid desiccation. I usually toss him a few boring white-fringed weevil grubs from the section on the hill, but this Christmas I may get a box of succulent wax moth larvae to get the fangs into. Nice, soft and sweet.
My female African praying mantis is usually full-grown by Christmas, so she may get a husband. No doubt he'll become the wedding breakfast. Two presents for the price of one -  a Dutch treat!