Yesterday as I was working I looked up to see a praying mantis clinging to the window above my desk. We see them around our house in the summer.
A few weeks ago Chitter noticed one in some of my hostas. We all stood and watched while the praying mantis waited stock still for some unsuspecting meal to come its way.
I have a fondness for praying mantis. Every time I see one I’m taken back to Mrs. Sult’s classroom at Martins Creek School. She was my second grade teacher.
Mrs. Sult let praying mantis live in the back windows of her class so that we could see their life cycle.
Pap went to the school when he was a boy, it was a very old school. The building was brick with thick walls that made for wide deep window ledges. Ledges that held books, papers, plants, boxes, the occasional child, and praying mantis in Mrs. Sult’s classroom.
She was a good teacher, but very strict, looking back that may have been her best asset. She was known for washing mouths out with soap whenever she heard a bad word come out of one.
I remember her washing one of my best friends mouth’s out and then she marched him down the long wood floored hallway to his daddy’s classroom (his daddy taught 6 and 7th grade) to tell him what the boy had done and what she had done to stop the bad habit before it took a firm hold on the child.
Praying mantis are said to be helpful to gardeners because they eat other insects that might eat your plants. I’ve heard other folks say they also eat insects that are beneficial like bees, although I’ve never seen one eat a bee.
Another thing you’ll hear about praying mantis is that they bring good luck because they are always praying.
Last night’s video: The Thread That Runs So True 15.
Tipper
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Once back in the 70s during the Christmas season we got a real tree and little did we know it had a light brown dried foam like cluster attached to a branch. As the tree warmed up in the house the cluster opened up and we had dozens of tiny praying mantis all over the room. We were always taught never to kill a praying mantis and tried to save them but had no idea what to do and they didn’t survived.
Those tiny insects were so fascinating and something I’ve never seen in nature.
I took some pictures of the Praying mantis by me. He was very inquisitive of me. He watched me with his big eyes as I put him on a bush from where I found him in my garage.
I have read that that praying mantis’ kill hummingbirds. I wonder if that’s true?
Praying Mantis? there is nothing about them that looks holy to me!
Looks like a wicked alien predator preying Mantis to me, one that if it was big enough,would prey on me! lol. When I see them, I always get a creepy feeling come over me. Same as when I see a Walking Stick though I rarely see those… maybe saw them twice in my life and I was always out in nature a lot but they are harder to notice as they blend in so well in nature.
Thank you for your photo of the praying mantis; it’s been years since I’ve seen one. They were prevalent when I was young (60 years ago) as were luna moths. I guess people fail to realize that decades of mass use of annual insecticides on millions and millions of acres has consequences. So much insect loss. Birds, too.
So far this year I’ve seen one praying mantis and two walking sticks
This post reminded me of when I was in high school (55 yrs ago) and I was a majorette in the band-when you wore white boots with glittery pom-poms on them & twirled a baton. There was a girl in my Sunday School Class named Edna & she would break her neck to sit by me. She would periodically lean over during class & say, “You know you’re going to hell for being a majorette & wearing those skimpy outfits.” She tormented me for 3 years. My Mom told me to just ignore her, but it was really hard. The kids in school tormented her by calling her Praying Mantis because she looked just like one. She was real tall & skinny with huge round glasses. My Mom never knew it but I was the one who got the kids to call her Praying Mantis. Silent revenge, that’s what I called it
The church I attended growing up had these bushes on either side in the front, can’t remember what they were called, but the praying mantises loved them! I remember watching them as a child and thinking they looked like little aliens lol. Also caught one in a jar once and took it to school for show and tell and my teacher had a fit. She said oh Cassie we have to release him because they’re an endangered species! I don’t know if they ever were but I just looked it up and they aren’t. Maybe teacher just didn’t want to risk an escaped mantis in her classroom
Cassie, our old church building had bushes around the front door. It was not praying mantis but a lot of praying went on around those bushes. It was from children getting a whipping for showing out in church. I along with some other kids did a lot of praying and begging at those bushes- please Mama don’t spank me, I won’t do it anymore. Shucks my praying and begging didn’t do me any good! I remember telling mother, Jesus was going to get mad at her for breaking those switches off His bushes, she just said He is made at you for showing out. These same kids are now old but still attend the same church and we sometimes stand around after the service laughing and telling about those old days when we were children and walking the aisle to the front door to get a spanking. All of us turned out to be good adults, so I reckon the spankings did some good.
I have always enjoyed watching a praying mantis. There is just something so unique about them. When I was young, I always wanted to keep one for a pet, but mama said they needed to be outdoors to help with the other insects. It’s been a while since I have seen any around here.
Hi Tipper,
Just wanted to let you know that I am in Williamsburg VA right now.
And boy, are those katydids a singing!
Great post today, Tipper. Thank you.
I, too, like the Praying Mantis. And whether it is called “praying” because its forelegs are often folded as if in prayer, or if it is called “preying” because it feeds upon other insects, this little creature is a wonder!
Happy Saturday and Happy Mantis watching to you and yours!
It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a praying mantis. I was begging to wonder if there were any around anymore. Thankful to know you’ve seen them around your place. I had a flashback as I read the story about the teacher washing a child’s mouth out with soap for saying a bad word. I had mine done as a child by my mother for the same reason. I survived it, I learned my lesson and yes, I can laugh about it.
Tipper, I am so glad to have found you! All the stories take me back to a time many year ago spending summers with my Grandmother in Arkansas. Thank you!
Morning Miss Tipper and everybody. Hope this coming weekend is a great and blessed one. I caught a touch of fall this week and went out to look at the merchandise being sold for fall decorating. Boy oh boy, it’s a lot of things and a lot of different prices low to high. I still picked out a few things. I’m not going to put it out yet, but I guess I’m ready. How do praying mantis compare to dragon flies? I love the dragon flies and have always been afraid of the praying mantis. I don’t know why though. They are such strange creatures, but also beautiful in their own way. I’ll try to remember that they are really a beneficial insect. Y’all take care. Jennifer
If my mom found one in her flowers she would pick it up and take it to the vegetable garden. Saying you’ll do me more good here. She also loved to watch the spiders weave their web. sometimes in the early morning she would call us all out to look at a perfect web that was clearly visible because the dew had not evaporated.
I knew praying mantis were good for gardeners because they eat other insects. But I didn’t know about them eating bees. Let’s hope they’re a bit more friendly to the pollinators. We need them too.
When I was little someone told me praying mantis’ would spit in your eye if you got close to it. That really scared me so I was always afraid of a praying mantis after that and did not want to be anywhere near one. I do not remember who told me that.
I grew up hearing the, “It’ll spit in your eye.” caution about grasshoppers. Used to chase girls holding them primed to spit. I don’t chase anything at 82. :<
Some people think praying mantis and walking sticks just look too alien-looking. That triangular face and green bug eyes of the mantis do look out of this world. Wonder what we look like to them? Too big to eat I suppose. I had not heard that having one around was good luck.
Thanks for posting about diddles. I was surprised that so few commenters were familiar with that word. And I was even more surprised to learn that it is common in Carter County, TN which is a long way from where I grew up in KY. But they are connected by the trail of westward migration in the 1800s. Language seems to kinda act like water, just flows hither and yon without any very obvious reasons. Your commenters demonstrate that with their family stories of moves of hundreds of miles and exporting words, stories and traditions as they go.
Growing up in northern Ohio I was always outside checking out every insect and bug there was. I remember one of the teachers talking about praying mantises and showing the class one of their nests with a live praying mantis inside a glass jar with holes poked in the lid. She told us that we could hatch them out if they were put in a warm room. I decided one afternoon while outdoors that I would try to find a nest and I did. I put it inside one of Mom’s canning jars, poked holes in the top of the lid and set it beside a heat register in the dining room. One morning not long after that I awoke to a scream. I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to see what the commotion was and found my mother beside the jar. Coming out of the holes in the jar were hundreds of tiny praying mantises. I remember saying, “Oh, they hatched!” My mother yelled at me and told me to “get those thangs out of the house.” Then she said, ” Go put them in Daddy’s garden, they’ll eat the bad bugs.” I did exactly that and Daddy told me later that they were good for his garden. Now whenever I see a praying mantis I remember that event which happened over 65 years ago.
I like to watch praying mantis too. It hasn’t been too many years that I learned what the eggs looked like. Once we left our red cedar Christmas tree to go to grandparents’ a few days for Christmas. When we returned there were hundreds of baby mantis in our windows, evidently from the tree.
When I used to demonstrate soap making at festivals I heard stories about washing mouths out with soap for saying dirty words. I noticed that your teacher didn’t wait to get the boy’s parents’ permission first. Wonder if it worked to keep him from saying more dirty words.
Hi Sallie- The same thing happened to my sister-in-law many years ago. After putting up a live Christmas tree, they were invaded by hundreds of praying mantis. This happened in Virginia.
Morning everyone. We usually see a few praying mantis in summer. Not this year yet. They are really friendly. I hear they are kept as pets. I’m afraid of bugs, but not these. Hope everyone is well. Anna from Arkansas.
As a child I carry my dinner to school in a brown paper poke. Our schoolhouse was also brick with those thick walls and window ledges. I would sit my dinner poke on a sunny sill to keep it warm.
Praying Mantis are wonderful to have in your garden! Unfortunately we don’t have them here in our neck of the woods. I need to change that and go find some praying mantis nests this fall and put them in our garden to hatch out next spring. So glad you have them around your house!
good morning Tipper, may the good Lord bless you and your family, God bless granny
Praying mantis’s are my favorite bugs. For a long time, I would associate them with my 19 year old son who passed away. He knew I loved them and every time sadness took hold, a mantis would appear and it got to be so frequent that my older son and I figured it was Cameron just letting me know he was ok and all is well
Not so much to do with the praying mantis but school. My elementary/grammar school was old and had once been a high school. My mother graduated from this school-Fork Shoals, in 1945. When I went it was for the 1st -7th grade. I thought some of the 7 teachers were strict but in looking back, they weren’t. High school, Woodmont, was the 8th-12th grade, no middle school. In my generation, the last thing you wanted if you misbehaved at school was for your parents to find out about it, any punishment at school was nothing compared to the punishment, most often whippings, you would get when you got home. Nowadays the children don’t get disciplined at home by their parents and when the daycare or schools discipline them, the parents want to sue the schools . And we wonder why the younger generations do the things they do nowadays. I know of no one that has had any mental problems because of being whipped, there is a difference between whippings and being abused by being beat or slapped in the face. I was raised in church, I was a drug child, anytime there was a church service, I was drug to church. I remember my third grade teacher having a devotion and praying each morning before her class started and saying a blessing before lunch. Her granddaughter was the principal at Fork Shoals when my children were going there, and I remember in the early 90’s at a Christmas program her saying I am told I cannot do this but I am going to pray, the audience gave her a standing ovation.
Randy, CPS will come after parents who whip their children these days. They call it child abuse.
No wonder the world is going to Hell in a hand basket.