I May Have Lost My Mind!

I KNOW My Honey thinks I have. It was bad enough when one of our science project butterflies was handicapped and I hand fed it sugar water for two weeks. But I have now gone WAY beyond that. We are now down to only 3 mantids left from a hatch of about 150. The 3 survivors consist of one female and two males. My hopes all along have been that we could go from egg case to egg case so that the kids can see the entire life cycle. Of course to do this we need both male and female. I was not 100%sure of the sexes until after the final molt. Speaking of the final molt.....WOW! It was so cool! All three mantids were about 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 inches long and had small wing buds. They all molted within 24 hours of each other and immediately were a good 3 1/2 to 4 inches long AND their wings became full length and functional. After the final molt it became clear that I had 2 males and one female. The males are almost completely brown and have very thin abdomens. The female is all green, has a huge abdomen, and her head is twice the size of the males. (The better to eat them with while mating..LOL) The two males emerged from their final molt unscathed, but that was not the case with the female. She somehow managed to get herself all tangled up in her molted skin and in the process of trying to free herself, caused damage to both of her front legs and one of her rear legs. For the first week, I pretty much left her alone and figured she would figure out how to hunt as another of our now deceased mantids did who was similarly disfigured. But after a week of watching her, it was clear that she was unable to catch any of the crickets in the cage. I put her in a smaller cage by herself and began maiming the crickets before putting them in in hopes of making it easier for her to catch them. It didn't work. When it seemed that she was on her last leg I began literally placing crickets onto her half working front leg using tweezers but even this was difficult, as the crickets fought to escape and she usually dropped them. As a final straw, a friend of mine suggested I try raw hamburger meat. I did and we finally had some success!!! So this is where the crazy part comes in. I am now hand feeding a praying mantis 90% fat free, ground sirloin on a daily basis. She LOVES it and is now thriving. She has really filled out and actually seems to know what to expect of me when I open the cage. I am not sure if it is a coincidence or if insects can be trained but she actually goes to the door of her enclosure when I am in the room. You can laugh but it's TRUE! So anyway, I now have some hope that I may be able to bring this life cycle study full circle. I am crossing my fingers! I will try to get a few pictures of my three beauties and post them. It isn't easy as I am no longer able to get them out because they can and do fly and the pictures through the mesh just don't come out all that great. I will see what I can come up with. They really are awesome little creatures and we have had so much fun watching and studying them. (I may or may not be having more fun with them than the boys! :O )
I have said it before but it bears repeating.... If you have kids, especially little boys, this is a science project that is so worth the money and time. At this point you will need to wait until next spring, but I cannot encourage you enough to do this. It has been an amazing journey.