Now what happened here you may ask, as obviously there is a story behind it?
And you are right about the story part, as this guy was saved from hanging around in a dangerous area. It is a Praying Mantis (Mantodea).
Maybe he liked my car, as he sat on the garage floor behind it, or maybe he wanted to check out the car's suspension. Not realizing that If I pulled the car out, it might run over him, or maybe one of us might step on him.
So, I called nature's maiden saving angel (my wife) to come and fetch him, and to put him in a safe spot in the garden.
The madam convinced the critter to climb onto her hand, and like an Emily Hobhouse she waltzed off to place the critter in our Jacob's Ladder bush. Let me tell you that the bush was an ideal place for the critter to be, as it blended in with the colors of the bush. The mantis liked the bush so much, as almost immediately it started to inspect the bush, while keeping an eye on my camera all of the time. But I was not close to it and used my zoom.
This was where I saw the critter on the garage floor.
And here, after picking it up, the wife put him onto a branch of the bush.
Yeah, you can see how it liked the bush.
Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks. Their elongated bodies may or may not have wings, but all mantodeans have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey; their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, resembling a praying posture, has led to the common name praying mantis.
And then the exploring journey started.
A closer shot of the picture above.
Look how perfectly it blended in with the colors of the bush. Can you see it?
If you can't see it, here below is a closer shot.
Finally, just to show you how nice it looks from a frontal view.
So, this is the life of a Mantis, and I am glad that we could put him out of harm's way. Some people are scared of insects, and kill them on sight, but mantises like most other insects play a role in the ecosystem. Take bees for instance, their survival has now become threatened, and it reminds me of an article (Bee gone. By Marita van der Vyver) that I read. Egyptian mythology described bees as the tears of the sun god Ra. They believed that the bees were divine messengers between the gods and humanity.
Sadly, over time, the bees were ever so slowly driven to the danger of extinction. This is just the same as so many other insects, and I bet that if many others had to see this mantis the critters life would be ended post haste. We all have a duty to protect nature as it is a part of us and if the unthinkable of no nature would become a possibility, then the very same would start to happen to human existence.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Until next time, cheers!
