Waiting for Baby Mantises

So we got our next Insect Lore item in the mail. I had no idea what it was going to be either. All I saw when I looked down on my front door stoop was a box with this on it.

Come to find out, in 3-6 weeks, we will be hatching a nest of Chinese praying mantises in our home. Yep. You heard me right. When we opened the package, we had an egg sack and a pagoda to house our new creatures.

After some careful construction (and a little McGyvering, I added some small paper edges to keep it from slipping out), our egg sack is resting carefully on it’s hanging platform in the pagoda.

So 3-6 weeks, and we have babies. Of course, the directions said we should release all but one or two or else they will eat each other. This is good news for my garden since they eat pest bugs. However that begs the question, what will our praying mantis eat? And then I read:

“Be prepared to find very small insects such as aphids, fruit flies, small caterpillars, moths, or other soft-bodied insects for them to eat. Your mantis will eat almost any live bug.”

Um. Soft-bodied?

*shiver*

Ok.

But then I also read you can pick up pin-head crickets at a pet store and they like those too. So perfect. I can handle that. I think.

(…visions of escaped crickets all over the back seat of my car and screaming, swatting children and hungry mantises waiting patiently at home…)

In the meantime, our mantis has already been named by my 4 year old. Copernicus. I swear. He picked it. I couldn’t even make that one up.

Until then, the egg sack is quiet in its new home.

I’ll keep you posted of course.