Coming home from work last night, I found a Praying Mantis scaling our back door.
Me and my son Whit brought him in for close inspection and learned a few important mantis rules:
1.They get irony, as this one climbed atop the cover of the Silver Palet cookbook which has flowers all over it.
2.They are fast. Which makes photography hard.
3. They can leap quite well, so when they do pause and you get the camera poised they are (as this one did) likely to jump onto the camera.
I let him crawl upon my finger to carry him back outdoors and he quickly made it to my back.
A bit later I went jogging a found a freshly dead cicada, blew off the ants, and carried it home in my sweaty palm for Whit to examine. He consulted his bug book and informed me he thought it was a Dog Days cicada.
2 comments:
Hi Keith! Thank you so much for visiting my blog yesterday. I absolutely love your blog -- and Otty too (Border Terriers are a hoot -- I know one named Alfie). I scrolled down and read your posts and I really enjoyed all your writing and photographs. I am so sorry about your son who died -- my heart ached when I read about that. I noticed throughout your blog that you have a really deep appreciation of life and nature, and a wonderful sense of humor. The praying mantis rules are fantastic -- climbing on the cookbook cover with flowers cracked me up. And the Dog Days cicada is as perfect as it can get for a hot summer!! I will definitely be back often.
:)
I've not seen any mantises this year while outside...thank heavens...they make me itch, just the sight of em.
I have seen some cicada carapaces here and there and have prayed mightily that this isn't going to be a swarm year.
I was told yesterday by someone who works at a grocery that employees are to wear gloves if handling open cans of recalled Castleberry products. Scary. You definitely dodged a major bullet.
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