Last night I read that this week we’re expecting a hard frost. Well, it’s November after all and nothing unusual about that. I mentioned to Camera Girl that I saw a dragonfly circling the yard the other day and now it’ll be the end of his time with the frost.
This morning Camera Girl was getting ready to go out on an errand and she said she’d stop at the top of the driveway and put a letter in the mailbox. I said I need some air. Give it to me. As I was walking back toward the house she is walking toward me instead of driving out in her car and yelling something excitedly. She is an enthusiastic woman. What she was saying was that she saw a praying mantis sitting on top of a gallon water jug that I had left on the porch. She asked me to catch it and save it indoors.
And sure enough, there it was. I scooped it up and put it in a convenient cage (the former home of one of my grandsons’ hermit crabs).
And the new plan is to see how long he can live in an indoor environment. I’ll try to offer him raw hamburger but if that fails we’ll get some crickets at the pet store. Well, Princess Sack of Potatoes will get a chance to study a praying mantis more closely than I thought.
That looks like a nice-sized mantis! My 10-year old brought in a lizard yesterday afternoon… he’s still in a cup with a lid on it… on the kitchen counter. While it’s not a gecko, it does look surprisingly like the Geico Gecko. It’s an anole lizard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anolis_carolinensis Unfortunately, the hole in the lid (actually for drinking…) is just a little too large and the lizard came climbing out on the table while we were eating last night. I didn’t even know it was in the cup at that point. Surprise! Surprise! Anyway, I guess the reason it’s relevant is that… Read more »
Ah, kids and strange pets. You have my sympathy. We’ve had every kind of harmless insect, crustacean, rodent, reptile and amphibian that you can find over the years. And I was the biggest kid among them.
Watch for the egg case to be lain somewhere. In my experience they need to be stored cool and dry for at least a week, but if you let them get too warm they will hatch out if season. When that happens your home will be overrun with very small and hungry predators. Not a danger to you, but bad for the hatchlings.
I’m going to put some twigs in the enclosure just in case.