We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of...
not one...
not two...
but a multitude of these little beasties.
Some friends blessed us with a praying mantis ootheca to hatch and release into our garden. An ootheca is the protective coating in which a female praying mantis covers her egg mass.
So I don't leave you thinking I am a certified brainiac, I confess up until this point I had been calling it a chrysallis.
So we're excitedly checking the egg case at least twice a day to see if the little predators have hatched so we can quickly release them. Cause if we don't, they will start eating each other.
The violence. The horror. And here I thought we were running a G rated house.
I've already admitted that I've turned into a bit of a weenie, so you might be able to imagine that I'm kind of not looking forward to having a 100+ pairs of beady, little eyes watching me in the backyard.
Of course, weenie might not be the word I would use to describe myself if I think about the fact that I'm releasing these ambush predators into my garden to be used as pest control. Jo Ann, paradox be thy name.
Beady eyes or not, somehow this homeschooling mama will persevere and probably hold one or two to boot. All in the name of education. And my garden.
5 comments:
Well! Your title certainly caught my attention! :)
Good for you for being a hands-on, OK-with-creepy-crawlies kind of mom!
wow..good for you....you need to give us one next year....
Can we have some? :) Remind me to tell you all about the Christmas that we had not one but two praying mantis nests hatch.
In our house. :)
Jolanthe
I'm eagerly awaiting photos of Abigail's 1st birthday :)
Did you get my message this morning? Our's hatched! We saw the first one today and it was so tiny.
We named it Burkie in honor of Jess since it's her birthday today. She doesn't know yet there is a bug named after her.
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