Insect Adventure!

A few minutes ago the sweet girl and I were heading back inside after our read-aloud time (chapter 4 of Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, if anyone is interested!). I crossed the sidewalk and started to reach out to open the door at the bottom of our stairs when I suddenly stopped in my tracks and let out a tiny screech.

There was a giant praying mantis on our front door!

Seriously, he was huge. Easily 6-8 inches long, all pointy legs and gangly neck (I never realized what adolescent looking bugs they were before) and a beautiful hue of green with some brown accents. You could tell he would blend in really well on most trees, but on our white painted door, he definitely stood out.

I confess I wasn't sure what to do. The sweet girl, despite her totally fearless stance toward insects we see in books, was understandably a bit nervous when she came face to face with this very large insect in our path. I was a bit nervous too, mostly because I didn't relish him flying straight at me when I tried to open the door. I assured S. that he didn't bite or sting, but I also thought it would be prudent to pick up a lengthy stick and tap at the door to try to get him to move before we got too much closer.

We found a sycamore twig of a few inches (the kind of twig S. used to call her "sycamore wand") and I made a couple of futile jabs near the door glass a few inches from its head. He shuffled an inch or two the the right, as though huffily annoyed that I would disturb his residence in the crack of our building's front door. A truck from the lumber yard rumbled past us at that moment, and the driver braked rather suddenly, making a loud, squeaking noise which seemed to startle the praying mantis as much as it did us. He dropped a few more inches, but caught himself right on our doorknob and clung to the gold metal surface for dear life.

Turned out the truck driver had braked so he could get out and see what I was half-heartedly jabbing at on our front door. He laughed when he saw the huge insect, and we marveled over it together. "I thought you must be looking at a bug!" he said, and helpfully headed toward the door with cupped hands (he had on huge, leathery work gloves). The thing buzzed off in indignation, lumbered its way into the sky (it almost looked too heavy to fly) wheeled around (making me jump a bit and S. give a tiny shriek) and then landed on the upper window of the apartment next door. The nice truck driver stayed around for a minute or two more so we could all marvel at the size of the insect and the rarity of seeing one around here (yes indeed, we are an urban family for whom this is a major event) though he told me his brother has rural property and they see them there all the time. He pointed out kindly that he thinks it's against the law to kill them, and I assured him I'd just been trying to make him fly away. "They're amazing, aren't they?" I said.

And indeed they are. Absurdly strange, and yet bizarrely beautiful. It made me think of the G.K. Chesterton quote, which I've quoted here before: "A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish."