A miniature forest built for millipedes, decomposition, and a little bit of quiet.
There is now a small piece of forest living upstairs at Bug Bureau HQ.
It has deep leaf litter, crumbling white-rotten wood, moss-covered branches, ferns and tiny things moving through the soil.
There are springtails busy cleaning and running around everywhere, almost invisible. Tricolor isopods wander through the leaf litter and climb over bark and plants. Fungi occasionally appear without invitation. Leaves slowly disappear.
And somewhere among all of it are our three millipedes — secretly exploring the little forest during the night, sometimes curled beneath a piece of bark, and sometimes apparently determined to convince us that the terrarium contains no millipedes at all.
Welcome to the Rotten Log Republic.
Building something that’s supposed to fall apart
Unlike most things we build, the Rotten Log Republic isn’t really supposed to stay the way we made it.
The substrate is deep and full of leaves and decaying wood because, for its residents, the floor isn’t just the floor.
It’s home. It’s hiding place. And quite a lot of it is dinner.
The Republic was planted with maidenhair fern, creeping fig and a Begonia rex, then furnished with bark, branches, moss, lots of leaves and plenty of rotten wood.
We arranged everything rather nicely. But it‘s already changing and shifting.
Leaves will be eaten and dragged around. Wood will continue to soften and break down. Moss may disappear into tiny millipede stomachs. Springtails will work through whatever gets left behind.
Occasionally a mushroom may pop up just to remind us that we are considerably less in charge of this ecosystem than we like to think.
It’s not really a terrarium designed to remain pristine.
It’s a tiny forest floor designed to happen.
Who lives here?
The Republic’s most conspicuous residents are our Ardentiella sp. “Tricolor” millipedes, about 15-20 of them.
With their bands of red, yellow and black, they’re the sort of animal that looks almost ridiculously extravagant when one finally emerges from underneath a piece of wood.
They share the Republic with three bold dark red Centrobolus splendidus.
There are springtails too, of course, doing the less glamorous work of the Republic.
The Republic’s secret purpose
But the Rotten Log Republic wasn’t built entirely for the millipedes or the isopods.
It has another purpose too.
We wanted a little calm island upstairs for our two Field Agents.
We’d already noticed something downstairs at the Rose District.
When somebody was tired, overwhelmed or simply needed a break, sitting near the enclosure and watching its inhabitants seemed to help.
There’s nothing they have to accomplish there.
No activity to finish. No instructions. No questions they have to answer.
They can just sit.
Look through the glass.
See who’s awake.
Watch something climb a branch very, very slowly.
So when we started planning a larger enclosure upstairs, that became part of the plan.
A tiny forest for the millipedes — and a quiet place for the humans beside it.
We didn’t actually know whether the Field Agents would use it that way.
It took approximately three days.
One last stop before bed
Without anybody officially declaring it a routine, the Rotten Log Republic became one.
Teeth get brushed. Pajamas happen.
And then, before bed:
Which isopods can we find tonight?
So we all gather around the glass and look.
Sometimes several are out, climbing through the plants or marching over the leaf litter as though they have somewhere extremely important to be.
Sometimes there’s one.
Sometimes we stare into 60 × 45 centimetres of miniature forest and discover that apparently every resident of the Republic has taken the evening off.
We look anyway.
And for a few minutes, everybody gets very quiet.
There is something wonderfully absorbing about searching through leaves for the tiniest movement — a striped body appearing behind a branch, a tiny millipede head peaking out from underneath a leaf, or two little flickering antennas suddenly poking out somewhere you have already checked three times.
Nothing particularly exciting has to happen.
That’s sort of the point.
We built the Rotten Log Republic because we wanted to keep millipedes.
What we ended up with is something slightly bigger than that.
It’s a habitat. A tiny experiment in decomposition. A constantly changing piece of forest floor. A place where mushrooms appear overnight and residents routinely vanish for days without filing the appropriate paperwork.
And, somehow, it has also become the place where our days slow down for a few minutes before bedtime.
So, for the official record:
Population: difficult to determine
Borders: 60 × 45 × 45 cm of glass
Primary industry: decomposition
Government: unclear
Official purpose: millipede and isopod habitat
Unofficial purpose: a few quiet minutes whenever somebody needs them
The Rotten Log Republic is officially open.
We’ll report back from inside its borders whenever its citizens decide to cooperate.
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