I feel like such a fool.  I love praying mantises.  There is something mystical about these creatures for me.  I have posted about them…I write about them…I photograph them.  For anyone living in a part of the country brutalized by heat and humidity this summer, it was impossible for gardening and plants.  A warm Winter last year didn’t kill off the bugs that infest gardens and in the heat of the summer they just exploded in population.  I would have two healthy plants and one would die.  I have several gorgeous hibiscus trees that I bring inside for the Winter, but they need to be clean of critters, else everything inside the house would be infested with flying things.

It’s cold here.  Frost cold.  Yesterday I told my nursery guru, a wonderful woman named Marty, that it was so bad this summer I only saw two praying mantises and precious few hummingbirds and few butterflies.  And so last evening I sprayed and brought my plants inside safe from the frost and this evening I took them outside again and thought, well, I’ll just spray once more.

And then I saw something lime green flutter at the base of the plant, on the soil, near the trunk of the plant.  And it was a glorious mantis laying her eggs and I had sprayed her, I don’t know when, last night, tonight…twice…I don’t know.

Like a fool the only thing I could think of doing was to spray her with a fine mist of water. She unfolded her wings (you rarely get to see that, unless they are in defense mode), but lay there still, her front legs curled up around her eyes.

I cannot explain it, even to myself, this feeling I have about praying mantises.  It goes way back to my childhood.  My mother taught me about them and I have loved them ever since.

I tell myself that perhaps it was just the end of her life cycle, but I’m just trying to make myself feel better.  Why couldn’t I leave well enough alone?

I couldn’t post a picture of her in the state I put her in/found her in.

Oh boy…