29 July 2006

Jase rocks

Jason finished up some flashing on the roof, and while he was up there, he plugged up the gutter over our porch. The one that spills buckets of rain water onto the flower bed in front of our house. That means, we could also plant the hibiscus and phlox that we bought today. Yay!

But, the real story is the praying mantis that Jase saw in the bed. She was eating a fly. A fly whose leg was still twitching.

You can't see the fly leg twitching action in these photographs, but if you make them larger (by clicking on them), you can see it's lower body. By the time we saw the scene, the mantis had already eaten the fly's head.

As I was taking photos, it stopped eating and turned to look at me. While looking up praying mantis at Wikipedia, we learned that they are one of the few insects that can turn their heads, and that there are 2,300 mantis species world-wide. We also learned that a praying mantis is capable of capturing and killing a humming bird.

Pretty wild.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great pictures!!

Anonymous said...

sheeseh, how weird is that? in my current post, i have a photo of a preying mantis! i really enjoy your blogs.

Mikaela said...

I rnjoy your blogs too, Vicki! Praying Mantis... er... Mantis'? Mantii? Laugh :D Anyway, they are quite intriguing, aren't they? :)

Anonymous said...

very cool and icky at the same time :)

Anonymous said...

wow i had NO idea a praying mantis could do that. amazing

Teddy

Mikaela said...

Yes, it is quite amazing, Teddy :)

-Mikaela