Mantis Case

 

 
When I was in the fourth grade one of the other little girls brought the teacher a puffy cocoon-like object that they found on a stick outside.  The girl wanted the teacher to tell her what it was.  The teacher didn't know, and she a passed it around the class so we could look at it, but none of us knew what it was either.  The teacher put the thing near the window in the classroom and we all forgot about it.  Well, when we came back to school after the weekend, there were hundreds of tiny preying mantis's on everything!  

You can imagine the chaos for the rest of the day.  The teacher couldn't get anyone to focus because of the periodic squeals from girls who found a bug on their desk, or on their shoe, or worst of all, in their hair.  Most often the bug was placed there by the boys, who instead of paying attention to lessons were searching for bugs to chase us with.  We ended up getting extended recces while the teacher organized bug swatting troupes with the janitors.   I've had a fondness for the preying mantis ever since.  No other bug has ever gotten me out of a day of spelling and math! Well, maybe head lice...

The preying mantis egg case in these photos is from a mint stalk near my back door.  Nearly ten years ago I brought some egg cases that I found when working in the field back to my house and stuck them around outside.  Each fall, ever since I brought the egg cases home, I find a few new cases on stalks, so I know have enough habitat in my yard that they can go from egg case to egg laying adult right here in my own back yard.  A preying mantis is a good predator to have in the garden eating other bugs that want to eat my plants.

This spring we happened to be on the back porch when the mantis babies were emerging from the case.  As you can see in the photos above and video below, if you look very closely, the babies are kind of oozing out of the slits in the top of the case, then dangling by a thread while their bodies slowly unfold and stiffen up.  When they first come out of the case, their antenna are stuck back and their dark eyes are very prominent.

After they gained their mini mantis shape, they crawled up the thread and each other, out onto the mint stalks and down the ground, or onto the house.  The whole process took less than two hours.  An army of bug eating soldiers for the garden.  

I've fussed with making a you-tube video for way longer than this little clip is worth, but here it is in all it's glory.  I was trying to capture one of the wormy looking babies as it wiggles free from the case, hopefully if you look on the top of the case you can see him even if the video is a little shaky.  Enjoy!