Praying Mantises

Alex had received a praying mantis kit for Christmas 2007. I finally got around to ordering the mantis egg case and it arrived about 3 weeks ago. The egg case is supposed to hatch about 2-4 weeks after you receive it. Well, the hatched Saturday and we had 100-200 baby praying mantises!

We wended up releasing them all as they become cannibalistic if they do not get enough food. That would not be a pretty site! I thought it was neat that they were very spread out and seemed to need a ring of "personal space."

Here's Alex holding one. You can see how tiny they were.

And, here's a video. We released them in groups all over our yard, so hopefully we'll be seeing them around sometimes!