Praying Mantis
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This is a picture of my Dad. Well, his hand, anyway. As I got close to this very pregnant praying mantis, she shied and started to run away, so Dad put his hand down to box her in. Now, the cool thing about praying mantises is: they ain’t afraid of nothing. She didn’t even flinch, but continued her flight from the camera right up onto Dad’s hand.
Dad, suddenly realizing he was in a game of freakout with a bug, showed off his own nerves of steel and just held still for the camera. I snapped maybe a dozen more pictures and then she decided to move to safer–by which I mean higher–ground. Dad was okay as she reached his bicep and started up onto his shoulder, but then she decided to circle around onto his back; at this point Dad declared the game over and brushed her off onto the grass, into which she quickly vanished.
I’ve got another picture of this mantis coming up in the next few days where we get a much better look at her face, but I just loved the human interaction and composition of this photo, so you get this one first.
SamWibatt said,
September 10, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
Quite a feeling to have a heavy mantis climbing on you. I guess it is that time of year, but I haven’t seen any around.
David Brady said,
September 11, 2007 @ 9:44 am
It’s funny–a few years ago you were batting them away with sticks and I hadn’t seen one at all… this is my seven or eighth one this year (counting the baby mantises all as one sighting).
Oh! And I think one of the mantises came home to lay her egg sac–there’s a HUGE foam egg casing on top of my screen door as of yesterday!
Insect Picture of the Day » Praying Mantis said,
September 25, 2007 @ 7:21 am
[…] female praying mantis hunts in the ground scrub near Pack Creek in Moab, Utah. This is the same praying mantis that was featured two weeks ago on my Dad’s hand. I’m trying to avoid posting duplicate […]