One afternoon just before I left Madrid, an afternoon when I apparently had far too much time on my hands and spent a while nosing around Ebay, I stumbled across a listing for a bunch of praying mantis egg clusters.
Praying mantis egg clusters. The perfect gift for the geek in your life.
Got me remembering encounters I've had with praying mantises. (Manti? Manteez? Mantiseseses?) For instance: a spring evening, me in the produce section of a supermarket in New Paltz, N.Y. Staring at fruits, vegetables, in shopping mode until something anomalous caught my eye: a mantis standing among the goods -- green, surprisingly large, motionless. Looking like no other member of the insect world. Remaining still, staring placidly back at me. I extended a hand, it stepped easily into my palm and waited patiently while I left the store, found some bushes, let it step off onto a leaf. It remained there for a moment, gazing at me, then moved deeper into the bush, out of view.
I remembered coming across a seed cluster in one of the bushes in our small back yard on Long Island, me five or six years old, remembered someone telling me praying mantises were protected, that it was a crime to kill one. (True? False? No idea.) I thought about how rarely I've had first-hand encounters with mantises, how distinctively cool-looking they are, how they make their living eating insects that we don't like, and I suddenly found myself ordering a bunch of egg clusters.
About a week after my return to northern Vermont, the morning mail brought a small cardbox box. Inside I found the clusters, ten of them. I gave away a few, put the rest in a plastic container with clear wrap over the top (minute holes poked in it to allow oxygen). The eggs would take a few weeks to hatch, when they did each cluster would produce one to two hundred baby mantises.
Weeks passed. Every time I passed the container with the clusters in the kitchen, I'd check to see if I'd become the proud father of hundreds of praying critters. Nothing doing.
Yesterday a.m.: on stumbling into the kitchen, my half-open eyes noticed the container with the clusters looked way fuzzy inside. Because, I found out on closer inspection, teeny mantises covered every surface, 70 or 80 of them all told. Once fed, showered, caffeinated, clothed, etc., I took the container outside to a hedgerow that runs along the property line. Took off the plastic wrap, ushered the little critters into the world, discovering in the process that they'd all come from one cluster, were still hatching out of it, little teeny heads poking out, little bodies slowly appearing. Left that cluster in a protected place, covered the container back up, five clusters left inside. Went on with the day.
Today: no change, no new crowds of baby mantises, though I'm having fun craning my neck every time I pass the container.
I am so easily entertained. (That's a good thing. I think.)
Waiting to pop:
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 8:37 AM [+]
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