The Great Preying Mantis Release 2011

On the last day of school, my good friend SweetDani* and I ended the school year with an outing to a local garden store while the girls were at school. We found quite a few lovely plants, and I'm pretty sure we'll both be going back...but I digress. While we were checking out, SD found some preying mantis pods at the cash register. They came in a pouch of 2 and asked if I wanted to split it with her. Not being a huge fan (but I'm not a killer though either) of insects I was a bit hesitant but agreed to it as she said her lovely daughter had such a great time with it last year.

Well, today while having my coffee I noticed that there was something crawling around it the container...THEY HATCHED!!! Oh my goodness, there were SO many crawling around in there! I retained my composure as I didn't want to alert CiBaby to the goings-on until I was prepared with my camera. Once I was ready I told her to come and see something really cool.

After looking outside at them, in their container, I was ready to release them...BUT WAIT! CiBaby really wanted her bestie to be there too...another bug lover. So we called up J and told her the pod had hatched and that we would wait until she got to our house to release them.



It was so neat to do, we will most likely do it again next year.

*Did you know there was a lemon basil named Sweet Dani? Me either!

Note: A quick word of caution, next time I will put them in a mason jar with a screen...some lost their lives in the tape. :(