Anticlimactic egg pics as was promised

 

Here's a pic of the remaining female. You can tell how much dirt it's eating just by looking at it.

And here're its eggs inside their capsule nest (which it makes by walking in circles for several hours while somehow extruding fiber pulp it's ingested).

The capsule itself has only one dirt wall (the other wall is the plastic wall of the vial, so I don't have a decent pic of the capsule exterior because it got squashed when I tried to remove it from the vial's wall, but I swear it looked like this). Not sure if E. elegans actually "broods" as per the caption though; my specimen abandoned its nests after their completion and it's conceivable elegans may desert its eggs in the same way too.

By the way, have I mentioned on here just how boring the animal is? Whenever it isn't in substrate that makes it restless and agitated, it sits around (usually underground, though it does surface approx. once every several days) and doesn't do much except slightly adjust its position every few hours and eat things occasionally. Some animals are highly secretive but active within their shelters, but this thing doesn't even do much when buried. In fact, that's one of the main reasons I regret impulse-grabbing it during that Arboretum trip (well, not exactly regret; more like "I knew it'd bore me and I'd not even get temporary enjoyment out of it, but I did it anyways because brains are irrational and I couldn't help myself"). The other reason, of course, is that arthropods are possibly conscious and thus an ethical liability. Asterella and Sphaerocarpos may exhibit an equal lack of behavior but at least they're plants and thus unconscious. And if I ever become affluent enough to finally do some fun Deep Research, I'd honestly have no idea where to start with the millipede (which is not to say that there aren't fascinating adaptions in its physiology), whereas with the worts I've already compiled a whole list of hypotheses to test.

Both of them turned out to be ovigerous females

Unfortunately today I had a meathead moment and unwittingly dumped one of the females in my yard because I thought I was holding an empty container. Felt so ashamed about it I had another mental breakdown (I do forgive myself, but still).

Also, here is a pic of the now-escaped one eating aquarium fish pellets (ingredients include fish meal + various grains and similar seeds) just for data's sake. It chewed that thing for hours. Blah blah another data point for "many detritivores love scavenging carrion", blah, etc.

Not that all detritivores are like that; Blaste oregona seems to refuse anything except some sort of unidentifiable bark dust (which is why I released the barklice a day after catching them; after the release they instantly began gorging on said dust and ceased their restlessness). Though I bet the lice'd still eat conspecifics dead of natural causes.