The mantis we'd found at a gas station in Belleville. It was just sitting there on a pump. We put it in an empty grande el macho star el nino bux por miho cup, and when we got home I put it in a critter keeper. I bought a dozen of them a while back when I found them in a dollar store. Fun for all ages it claimed, and I presumed to qualify.

That night I put it on the dish drying rack on the counter to get a good pic of it. They're supremely confident insects and quite smart I think. They never flee or act nervous. In fact if you believed they were the ruling species of the galaxy you'd probably think they were acting accordingly.

Cait had come downstairs and saw this thing and said "WTF(!) dad". I guess she'd figured we now had free range manti; a charming idea but alas not. I asked her if she liked it and wasn't it cool and she ran upstairs and came back with a can of Raid which we both knew she wasn't going to actually use.

It may have been a Kodak moment, but the Kodak needs batteries, instead it was a Canon moment.

It was one of the coolest pets ever, albeit short lived. Not sure what to feed it I gave it a medium sized cricket we had on hand for the lizard(s). Popped the cricket in and put the lid back on. The cricket moved around nervously as crickets are want to do the mantis just stared. Then in a split second she unfolded her long arms and I'm not even sure what she did next but the cricket suddenly had no head.

I threw in another one to be sure and sure enough the same result ensued. Ok so maybe crickets are too big to use as mantis food. I put a small piece of banana in there in a plastic bottle cap and very shortly she feasted on fruit flies which seemed perfect for her.

Sadly, some idiot (almost certainly me) forgot to give it fresh water one day and it croaked.