Patient, camouflaged and efficient, a stalker haunts the landscape of suburbia. With arms folded as if in prayer, the praying mantis takes his position in the shrubbery, on decks or even on the walls of our home, calmly waiting for victims to wander by. Should another insect get too close, he snatches it with his jagged forelimbs and then patiently devours the hapless victim, one mouthful at a time.
Despite its fearsome reputation, the mantis is of no danger to humans, does not eat our plants and actually kills a large variety of harmful insects. Unfortunately, it also consumes beneficial bees and ladybugs and female mantises occasionally eat their own mates, after fertilization, of course. Eggs are laid in cocoon-like mats, usually attached to the lower branches of shrubs; those eggs not consumed by winter foragers (mice and birds) will hatch in the spring, yielding miniature mantises. Maturing to adulthood by mid-late summer, these silent predators die off with the first hard freeze.
