In memory of Pray, our praying mantis

[jjchung]

My 8 year old daughter and I first found a green Stagmomantis californica in our backyard last August. While we were BBQing, she had climbed up the table and was literally standing on the side of the grilled meat plate. We have no idea why she would go there, but she readily climbed on to my hand was moved into our butterfly cage. We didn't know much about praying mantises at the beginning. I had no idea why she didn't have wings until I realized that juveniles don't have wings. My daughter named her Pray. We would take her out to play with, letting her crawl on our hands. We borrowed books from the library and read about mantises from this forum. We gave her a long twig so she could molt which she did one morning. Her most common food was skipper butterflies that frequented the lantana, but she ate a wide variety of insects such as flies, moths, a giant moth, grasshopper, caterpillar, lady bugs, lace wings and other insects I can't name. It wasn't always easy to find food for her so during the winter we would feed her catfood and sometimes honey. While I should have misted her cage, we usually would feed her water on my wet hands and eventually by the opposite end of a plastic spoon. My daughter loves mantises, but unfortunately we made a couple of mistakes that prevents her from holding one ever again. She was looking very closely at the mantis while she was on my hand and jumped on her face. Another time we put catfood on my fingernail and she ate it. My daughter did the same, but she moved the food away and the mantis grabbed on to her finger with the big thorny claw which made her cry. But she stilled loved mantis and would cry when I said we would have to let another mantis we found this spring go back to nature. She didn't want it to get eaten. Pray went with us on many trips in the car and our neighborhood to collect insects. She even went on a road trip to Palm Springs. We would take her with us to restaurants, malls, and stores and showed her to interested people. When we found her in August, she was already an L6 so I figure she probably lived to the ripe old age of 16 months. She laid 3 oothecas. She was dearly loved and my daughter loved talking about her. She even did a speech about mantises. But her time was coming to an end as she would take longer to catch insects, her abdomen would sometimes rest on the ground, and would fall down occasionally. Sadly the ants in the house found her weakened condition and attacked her. I thought she was dead on the ground, but when I dumped her in the hole, I saw her arm move. Almost likely waving goodbye. I had to bury her without my daughter seeing it, and then we both went to her burial spot. My daughter wanted to spay mist on the ground and then she told me Pray was her best pet and that Pray was old and lived a good life. We loved you Pray.

 

[birdiefu]

RIP Pray, thank you for sharing the wonderful moments you and your daughter had with her! Sounds like despite the scary moments, your daughter still loved her Pray so very much and tried to share those feelings with others. I bet in the future if you have others, she may slowly be ok with handling them- for some people it takes a bit of time to get over some innate "heebie jeebies", and your daughter sound like she has the will to get through it one day.

Welcome to the forum! I know you will never forget Pray, but maybe you will have more mantids to love in the future

 

[dmina]

Great story.. Welcome to the forum... sorry for your loss.. It sounded like you gave Pray a great life... what great memories you made.. Thanks for sharing..

 

[Sticky]

Wonderful story! I love it! I take my mantids outside for "walkies" on my hat around my apartment complex and to one restaurant Martha's. I named a mantis for her too.

Thanks so much for sharing your wonderful story. I cried at the end!

 

[Digger]

Such an inspiring, terrific story. I hope you and your daughter are able to raise some of Prey's children !

 

[Salmonsaladsandwich]

I think the oothecas are infertile. It doesn't say anything about Pray mating.

 

[LAME]

Great thing about the mantis hobby, there is always more to enjoy.

 

[jjchung]

Thanks for the encouraging words.

Yep the oothecas are infertile. I did find a huge patch of lantanas which have tons of skipper butterflies so we may eventually raise another Mantis again.