They HATCHED! I'm a BABY MAMMA! Praying Mantis

On April 23, 2015  I bought 2 Praying Mantis  (Tenedora Sinensis) pods at The Arbor Gate.  I tied the pods to two different areas with natural twine.  Firstly on my roses because they have been beset by little bugs called Thrips and second in my container garden.  My hope is that they will eat these and other garden pests which will allow me to continue with my gardening without poison.  I have to watch Charles because he is voraciously protective of his yard and if it gets invaded with anything at all he goes after it with the savagery of a medieval knight and his weapon of choice is poison or whatever is most likely to get the job done quickly which is usually NOT my "tree hugging" methods.  I was quite the city girl growing up so if you told me that someday I would be excited to see little bugs hatch and (gasp) actually let them crawl on me I would have laughed out loud at you as I slipped on my big belled jeans with the tiny zipper and slipped my peace necklace over my head....

Hatched on May 16, 2015

Everything I read about hatching the baby mantis advises patience and this was certainly the case.  I spent a LOT of time watching the pods and worrying that they would never hatch.  On May 16th the pod I had in the rose garden hatched.  I had watched a few videos on YouTube so I had a basic idea of what would happen and luckily for me, there was evidence of the hatching so I could start looking for the babies.  If you will look closely above, you can see husks of molted mantises or at least that is what I think it is.  I was worried that it was dead mantises and I saved some to look at under the microscope at a later time.  I started to see some of the babies which was made easier by the dark bark mulch we have under the roses.  They were totally not scared of me and were happy to hop on my finger.  I only saw three so I was worried about whether they had hatched properly.  One day later and I can't see any at ALL.  I am confident that there are plenty of tiny bugs in that mulch so I hope they will have plenty to eat.  I do know that they are mightily territorial so not sure how they will work out sharing the space or what their range of ownership is. Aren't they CUTE!

After I got the new babies situated I decided to take a look at the hatched pod since I wanted to know what it looked like inside.  I got my trusted knife that Charles gave which I will tell you is razor sharp and tried to cut into it.  To my amazement, it could not even scratch the tough fibers of the pod casing.  If I had known it was this tough, I wouldn't have worried so much about it.  I finally had to actually stab it and use brute strength to tear it open which took several minutes.  The inside was dense with hundreds of little what looks like seeds but were actually where the mantids developed.  Definitely science fiction fodder and I'm stashing away the experience to include in one of my stories or a book.

 After I satisfied my morbid curiosity about the POD, I decided that I wanted more control over the hatching and where the babies would end up so I cut the remaining pod from the eggplant I attached it to in the container garden and transferred it to a jar I prepared with a few twigs and some soft wood shavings in the bottom.

I peered at the pod with a magnifying glass and I really thought I saw a little head trying to poke through so I was keeping a tight watch.  I put it on the front porch which never gets full sun but I spend a lot of time there so, I knew I would notice right away if they hatched.  On Sunday morning, May 17th when I woke up, I went right out to look and THERE THEY WERE!

I can't describe to you about how excited I was but Charles can, since he was looking at me like I had just landed from outer space and was rolling his eyes.  I enlisted his help  to video their release into the garden.  I released a few on the other half of the roses, some into my container garden and then I sat the jar with the remaining babies in my front flower bed.  If I were a Praying Mantis, this is where I'd want to live.  Pretty, shady and full of tasty bugs.  Did I just say that?  ewwwwww.

During the morning I kept going back to check on the babies and was horrified to see a lizard happily making one of my babies his BREAKFAST.  Bad, bad little lizard! I tried to catch him to "relocate" him but had no luck at that so I just chased him away.  I looked up to see Charles who was doing his weekly yard maintenance watching me with an amused look on his face.  I said, "WHAT, he was eating one of my babies!"  To which he replied, "Well, you are going to have to chase off this one bird that I watched eating several of "your babies" in the front yard too and I'm thinking you are going to be very busy.  He was having a field day."  He assured me, with a roll of his eyes that he chased that mean bird off as well and wandered off to finish his work and leave his crazy wife to her "baby sitting".   He's a trooper and I'm a proud Praying Mantis Baby mamma!
 Here is a good link about Mantis....http://gardeningzone.com/pages/praying-mantis-release