The Mantis Has Landed -

[jscheetz]

Bugs are cool

[Flextime]

Dandy photo there J.

Hate them bugs though. Serious biters.

Still, interesting to see and your photo is great.

[loo10]

Excellent photo.

I've always been fascinated by Mantis'.

First one I ever saw....turned his head and looked at me.

That did it...

I'm was a praying mantis fan from then on.

Thanks!

[davekeim]

Ah, my new back ground on the laptop! Thanks!

Signed,

Cardiac

[jscheetz]

Thanks guys,

The praying mantis always looks like an alien to me - this one especially. He was just wondering around the flower bed one day asking to have his pic taken. I have a freind who does fantasy art and he always uses bugs for his starting point for the scary creatures. Kinda cool looking - but if you were an inch long beetle and saw this guy, it would probably give you a different perspective!!

JS

[Al Agnew]

I love mantises too. One time we found this brownish foamy looking "growth" on a plant and brought it into the house. We didn't realize it was a nursery for mantises. A day or two later they all hatched out, and we had little mantises crawling all over the house for weeks!

[jscheetz]

hehehe Al, sounds like fun!!

My wife actually bought mantis eggs - supposed to put them in the garden so they eat aphids and whatnot. I was skeptical, and didn't want to introduce non native critters, but they "assured" me they were local breeds - so... she put out two egg sacs and one got eaten by birds, and the other hatched and we had hundreds of these little half inch long mantis' running all over the deck - they were pretty cool, but I suspect pretty suceptible to other bugs - didn't seem to be any more around that fall than usual so......

Of course growing up we did bring a garter snake in the house that promptly had babies - found those in shoes and everything for the next week

JS

[loo10]

ha-ha

You guys all have different wives than what I have.

My beloved would have FREAKED out!!!!!!!!!

If we'd have had a hatching of either

mantis' or garter snakes in the house...

I'd have had to go without sleep or food until I'd

wrangled them all up.

"Have you got all of them?

You sure?????

Then what are you sitting there for? Get busy Boy!"

[catman]

I do look at bugs different today than I did with this fly fishing.

[24KGold]

That is an incredible picture. I have always been fascinated by Mantises.

When I was a kid, my favorite movie was called..."The Deadly Mantis" about a prehistoric gigantic Mantis who thawed out from an Iceberg and terrorized, I think, New York City. It was Cheezy but was a good ol fashioned monster movie.

Terry