Last August when we saw the praying mantis on the fern hanging just outside the front door, we didn’t think much more than, “Wow, a praying mantis!” We took a few photos. It climbed up the chain we hung the fern on and it was soon gone. And we forgot about it.

The mantis who visited our fern in August, apparently having found it a good nursery

Leah brought the fern inside to overwinter. She cut off some of the lower fronds and we put it in the room we use for our office. Today she called me in to ask about some bugs she had found. I expected to find ladybugs, since they’re trying to get inside to escape the cold weather now. But they weren’t ladybugs.

Praying mantis nymph trying to escape a large index finger

Unfortunately, they were the praying mantis nymphs emeging from the eggs our earlier visitor left in August. I saw around 10 dead and six or seven live ones. Several dead nymphs are lying just over my finger near the sliding glass door that apparently attracted them. I put this one and the others I found outside, but I doubt they will survive, since, as I understand it, they should emerge in the spring. Apparently the warm inside temperatures made them emerge early. I’m sorry about that. I like praying mantises, and not only because they eat other insects and are generally neat. They are visual hunters, which means they will interact with you when you get close enough. Even the babies watch as the finger of doom approaches. I slipped an envelope up next to them and managed to get them to climb on, but they tended to jump off as I moved them outside. They jump like they have springs in their legs.

I wished them well, but it’s a cold world out there right now.

UPDATE

We found a couple more nymphs perched at the tip of some fronds. I caught them and ended up releasing them outside. We checked into trying to raise them but it looks like it would be fairly intensive, and even if we succeeded, we would end up with adult mantises that couldn’t be released outside because it would be the middle of the winter.