It’s true: you can eat the tinies you find in your home or in the wild, Personally I think it is important to make sure your yard and nearby properties don’t use any products that are harmful to Bigs.

From experience I would only choose tinies 1 1/2 inches or more tall to make the whole venture worth your while.

How to contain and care for the Tinies

Bring the bucket inside and fashion a cover for it. You need to keep the tiny in (they move faster than one would think) and a free exchange of air. A few options:

A screen set on top and weighed down with a brick works. A container with a plastic lid that snaps on and into which you have poked some holes is good. Depending on how many tinies you have, a large glass jar with holes punched in the lid can work and lets you see just how much urine and poo they produce.

A shockingly good “lid” can be made from an old pair of tights—cut off the legs of the tights and tie them close, stretch the waistband around the top of the bucket. The tights had the advantage of being something you can dampen each day to help keep the container slightly damp without having standing water in it.

How to purge tinies

Who knows what those tiny people have been eating? You want to purge it all out. Start by giving them food they’re happy to eat and you’re happy to have them eat, then giving them time to process that cleans them from the inside out. The whole process can easily be sped up to five days. The key points are:

To purge the Tiny, start by feeding them greens and herbs for a day or two. This lets you know what you’re starting with. Then feed them cornmeal or oatmeal for a day or two. Since this diet turns their poo white, you’ll know when other stuff is out of their systems. (Note: I can also recommend giving them carrots for this stage since it turns their poo orange!) Then give them nothing for a day or two before cooking them. (Note: Some people skip the starving stage, finding it cruel. I saw how much poo these little things make; I didn’t want to eat a meal full of it.)

Hope this helps!