Hello! 27F from Massachusetts, as a forewarning I'm a little bit crazy. 
I have a very strong tendency to hyper-focus on topics i'm interested in, and then I have tunnel vision for it until eventually I calm down to a more normal level of focus, whenever that might be. Currently my focus is specifically ants but I jump around between critters and freshwater fish for the most part... It can't really be helped, but at least I have fun and stay distracted during these times. My head is filled with obscure, useless-in-daily-life knowledge and i'm not ashamed of it.
I'm pretty new to all this and I'm still learning a lot. All of this started when I found a little (julid) millipede at work and had the random thought of, Hmm, does this grow any bigger? Started researching it and went down a rabbit hole of inverts. I have been lurking on reddit for the most part, the isopod and millipede subreddits mostly but stumbled onto the antkeeping one a couple months ago. Started wandering around on there and getting more curious, seeing people catching their own queens and started watching YouTube videos on formicariums. Started playing "empires of the undergrowth" (ant survival and strategy game) to further fuel the obsession interest. Of course then a nuptial flight unexpectedly happened here outside my work, leading to my boyfriend bringing me a Camponotus Pennsylvanicus queen because he knew I would be happy to see it. You can probably see where that all went... Further down the rabbit hole.
I just found this forum yesterday and thought it looked pretty active and figured I may as well lurk around an actual community to continue learning things... and possibly vent a little of the interest out of my system so I can stop driving everyone around me absolutely crazy with my nerdy babbling.
Currently invert-wise I have so far amassed a terrarium with millipedes, 1 Julid, 1 Spirobolellus sp maui and 3 Feathers.. Not that I ever see more than one at a time because they hide constantly....
A second small terrarium (OK fine, it's a tupperware with holes in the lid) with 3 unknown wild isopods that each made the mistake of being adorable and also in the wrong place at the wrong time (directly in front of me while I have a test tube on hand..) as well as an unknown number of babies from the first one I found. I just found the babies yesterday and immediately started fawning all over them, I already love them and I have harassed all of my friends with videos of all of them cleaning their antennae. (I can't stop!)
My most recent addition being yesterday I found a Tetramorium Immigrans queen when I just so happened to crawl under the sprinkler water tank outside my work looking for.... Critters. I just set her up in a test tube in a cardboard box with a nanny cam on her so I can creep but not disturb her. I had never heard of the species before getting help with IDing yesterday and i'm very happy to hear that they are a great beginner species! I'm really looking forward to seeing her first brood and i'm going to do my best to keep her happy.
The original Camponotus Pennsylvanicus unfortunately died before laying any eggs, and then a Camponotus Chromeiodes I found had the same result. I'm really disappointed about the Chromeiodes especially, because she seemed so healthy and was gorgeous. I had heard about how her workers would also be red like her and let myself get excited before she passed. I'm still looking for more queens constantly and watching the weather for good days for more flights but i'm starting to think I won't see another one this year.
I spent my night on AntFlights.com, saving the GPS markers with all of the details of each queen or flight sighting, location details, weather conditions, etc and loading them all into their own ant hunting folder.... Meaning I can look down the list, see the dates closest to mine and the weather conditions they were spotted at and if it seems like a good day I can directly navigate to where someone reported said sighting. Believe that I'm crazy yet? I have notebooks that I keep information that I find interesting in, about different species of critters or freshwater fish, specifics about a setup I learned about, I even spent several hours recently, engrossed in learning about the isopod iridescent virus for literally no reason whatsoever.
Uh, so anyways... Hello.
