Released into the wild

Once upon a time, late last fall-ish, I was puttering around in our sorry excuse for a garden and found a weird bug sac of some kind on a stem of one of our very woody basil plants. I showed Dada and broke the piece of stem off and sequestered the entire thing in an empty, clean Jif jar. He didn’t hold out high expectations of anything hatching and I sincerely hoped it’d be something cool and not something disgusting. Dragonflies, ladybugs, etc are welcome in our corner of nature. I’m less thrilled about wasps, for example, but did have one land on my knee the other day and he or did she absolutely no damage to me whatsoever. Thanked him or her for landing on my knee instead of, say, my head or my face, and I asked if it was a larva eating wasp or some other kind, at which point it perked up as if remembering it had a job to do, and off it went. We both lived happily ever after.

Anyway, I stuck that Jif jar on a sunny windowsill facing south, after Dada kindly poked small air holes in the lid. He is so good to put up with all my whims.

I’d kept an eye on it, as it was at eye level every day that I opened the curtain in front of it. Today, as I went to close the curtain to block some afternoon sun, I noticed movement.

BABY PRAYING MANTISES!!!!

I am SOOOOOO excited!! I called everybody and when everyone got their fill, I took them outside and released them by twos and threes all along the side and back of the house. I know they are excellent hunters so I wanted to make sure they all had some territory to work, but it is a big world and thought they might at least want to start their first day of freedom with a sibling. If they eat each other, that’s their business. Some were quite eager to climb out and explore and others I had to coax out. I even charged a pollen-covered bumble thunder beast with showing a few of the babies around. 

I popped by stick with sac back in the jar and put it back on the windowsill in case there are any late bloomers. I’m so glad I got curious last fall! What a neat surprise!