Mantis-Mania

They've arrived!

In the fall I found a very pregnant female mantis.  Really entertaining for the kids ( and adults) to feed them insects and watch them stalk, catch, and devour them.  After about 2 weeks, she laid an egg sac on a branch in her container, then died about a week later.   I moved the egg sac into a container and put them in the garage for the winter ( safe from freezes, but not warm enough so that the eggs hatch in the winter. 

I brought them inside when the weather warmed up, and last night when I looked in the container there were about 30 some odd of these little critters running around.  Let most of them go last night in the yard, and kept about a dozen to show my son when he woke up. Let the rest go in the yard after my son got home from school.  Hopefully some will stick around in the yard and eat up the mosquitos and other nuisance bugs that come around!









 

That is so neat. I used to see some HUGE ones on the island of Kauai.

my all time fav critters! VERY COOL

Cool Jon.  Thanks for sharing.

Nice job!  Thanks for the post Jonathan.

thats awesome!  can you post a pic of the top and bottom of the egg case?  I never can tell what looks like a hatched case v's one thats waiting.


I have 5 egg cases that I know of in my garden from last year

Per your request:



The holes you see in the middle of the egg sac are where the little buggers popped out of.

That's awesome.  Last year, my Wife came home from OSH with a mantis egg case (she originally went to buy lady bugs for our garden).  We left it in a ceramic bowl in our dining room and completely forgot about it until the warm weather hit and our kitchen was over run with tiny mantises!  It made for an interesting week     Love those things though... completely solved our baby spider issues for a while.

Great post, thanks for sharing! Great pic with your son in the back ground!

Ahhh yes!! My favorite time of year! Here are my babies!

Crazy.....

Trout be like:
MMMMMMMM, mantises....

another wave popped out this morning, and were escorted to the backyard for bug slaying duty