Porch Visitor

This is a bit of a cross-post from Facebook, so apologies to those of you who have already seen this there.


Earlier today I was minding my own business, hanging outside with my son (he was playing with "sidewalkchalk," all one word), when I realized I should check on Celia, who was napping inside. Stepping onto the front porch something caught my eye--so I turned and nearly peed in my pants.

"You talkin' to me?"

Ok--I know that praying mantis (manti?) do not eat humans, but this was the biggest bug I had seen since I (unfortunately) saw Men in Black. I collected myself and then ran inside to get my camera.

Strike a pose.

The initial shock of seeing one of these insects wore off pretty quickly, and I was able to appreciate how beautiful they really are. This guy (from my cursory research on Wikipedia, I believe this is a he-mantis, as the she-mantis is larger and greener) was about 3 or 4 inches long and seemed totally unconcerned that I was there. I kept waiting for him to fly towards the camera, but eventually he grew weary of the porch and alighted on a nearby branch. His wings were big...in flight he looked like a small bird.

Definitely not an ant.

I think this whole event startled me so much because I had forgotten that big bugs existed. I mean, I know they exist, but the biggest things I usually see around here are daddy longlegs, and those are hardly that interesting. So to have something as interesting as a praying mantis grace my porch was a bit startling. In fact, if you had asked me this morning to name the habitat of the praying mantis, I would have looked at you like you were an idiot. And then I would have said something truly enlightened like "Africa" or "Mexico."

At one point I stopped shooting and brought Andres over to see him. I think he thought the mantis was cool, but he also seemed a bit nervous too. He got back to playing with sidewalkchalk pretty quick.