While harvesting fennel seeds from my organic garden I was suddenly surprised.
Double click on the photo if you don't see it.
The Praying Mantis is my favorite insect. Since moving to this home nine years ago I have had them living in the garden in front of my house. A couple of times the young ones would hang out in our family room window giving us great up-close viewing. Other times I have turned around in my computer desk chair to see an adult on my window. I have found egg cases in the bushes in that garden while hand pruning them.
Last year we removed about twenty bushes and this year the other twenty came out. The garden is left with two holly bushes, two magnolia trees and a couple of small Chinese Dogwoods, a crab apple and a white oak sapling (all to be transplanted this fall elsewhere). I was worried we did away with the praying mantises in the destruction of the bushes and the hauling away of them. The cut-down bushes were deposited in my woods about thirty feet from my vegetable garden. I now see that one made its way to the veg garden (hooray!). I also spotted a large adult in the holly bush about two weeks ago. Phew.
The Praying Mantis is fun to watch. They really look at you and watch you. Their necks move and they can even cock their neck on an angle as they contemplate whatever they are thinking about while they stare you down.
Last year while taking a close up photo of a praying mantis on the clapboard siding of my house I guess I got too close. I was shocked to get smacked in the forehead by the thing. I had been too absorbed doing manual focusing of my DSLR camera. I was so surpised (and didn't see it coming, that's how fast they move) and screamed based on impulse. Don't fool with a praying mantis!
(Isn't it amazing how the fennel plant's coloring is so close to that of the Praying Mantis?)
1 comments:
Very cool. I wish we had some around here. I did see one once when I went to Ottawa , but it was in a bus station! Hardly a natural environment.
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