Cathy Shaw with her old friend

AN exotic stick insect has been miraculously reunited with its owner after it escaped from a tower block, climbed nine storeys and crawled to a children’s centre in Camden Town. B

ug enthusiast Cathy Shaw had not realised her jungle nymph had disappeared out of her flat window in Camden Town. And to any passer-by, it might have been mistaken for a leaf. B

ut this week, she was reunited with her old friend after a family found it a long, long way from home – in stick insect terms – sitting on a wall near the Agar Children’s Centre in Wrotham Road.

Ms Shaw said: “He was quite old and his wings were messed up so he couldn’t fly. I’m not sure how he got out.  He was the last of my jungle nymphs, as I’m trying to scale things back, so I thought it would be fine to have him in a pot full of bramble by my TV. I just thought ‘stay there and live the rest of your life old man’ kind of thing.”

The insect’s finder was Ellie Daligan, who noticed the large brown creature on a fence by the centre last Thursday. The next day, she saw it had moved further down on to a concrete wall.

Pets come in all shapes and sizes

She said: “I felt bad for it. We love animals in this house. So I came down with my three-year-old daughter and husband. She loves bugs so she was really excited. We put it in a hamster wheel –I didn’t know what to do with it but I didn’t want to leave it to most likely die.” Over the weekend they kept the bug in a tank and fed it birch leaves.

“I tried calling the zoo as that’s the only place I could think of,” said Ms Daligan. “They said they don’t take stuff off the general public and suggested the RSPCA. I didn’t know if it was the right place. It didn’t do anything for a while and once it had some food it perked up.”

Ms Daligan’s daughter looking at the stick insect in a tank while her mother searched for its owner

While everybody has seen a social media post about lost cats, the family’s search for the jungle nymph’s owner might have stood out as something different for anybody scrolling through – but there was still no hint as to where it had come from.

It was only by chance that she found Ms Shaw after chatting about he discovery with the concierge of the flats nearby – who knew exactly who might be missing a stick insect in one of the flats upstairs.

“He’s now back home which is really good, we were happy it didn’t just die,” said Ms Daligan.

“When she [Ms Shaw] came to collect it she just picked it up and had it on her top for a bit before she put it in the paper bag.”

The reunion was all a bit of a surprise for Ms Shaw, as only the concierge knew she collected insects and she had not realised it had left its pot.

“It’s a long way to go. He can’t fly so I don’t know how he got down there,” she said.

Ms Shaw thought her nymph was in a pot by the TV

“There’s loads of feral rats and crows and other things, and no one did anything to him which is really nice. To be honest they’re not the best stick insect to have because if they feel threatened they grab you with their back legs and they’ve got spines on their back legs so it can hurt. The males arent as bad as the females, though.”

Ms Shaw collects and breeds exotic insects as a hobby, which she got into during the coronavirus lockdown.

She estimates her collection of bugs – from an orchid praying mantis to a salmon pink bird-eating tarantula – at the moment is “in the hundreds”, as her jumping spiders have just had babies.

“Everyone is into jumping spiders at the moment. Their little faces are quite cute,” she said, adding that she was more scared of house spiders.

Ms Shaw said: “There’s a big insect collecting hobby. I really like praying mantis. That’s what I started off with.”

Another of Ms Shaw’s collection of insects at her home in Camden Town, which runs into the hundreds

She orders young bugs from websites delivered through the post and also goes to insect shows across the country.

“I’m trying to lessen it and do more of the taxidermy side of it”, she said. “People send me their dead insects and I taxidermy them and frame them.”

She added she was very grateful to Ms Daligan’s family for saving her jungle nymph, and sent them a card to say thank you.