The winter’s frost and summer’s heat completely killed my wife’s ferns under her kitchen window at the front of our home. So I decided yesterday to get out there and pull the darned things up.
Well, just as I pulled maybe a quarter of them out, up jumped this critter:
What is it? It’s a praying mantis!
It blended in so well with the dried ferns that it surprised me big time when it jumped.
A couple years ago one of my teens mentioned hearing other teens claiming to have seen these little hunters in the area. I figured it was just talk. You know…one teen tries to impress another by making up stories.
But now I do see with my own eyes.
Who would’ve ever thought California’s Central Coast could be home to praying mantis? I surely never imagined such a thing.
What did I do with it? Nothing. These bad boys eat black widows, one of the critters that once infested the wooded areas behind my home, before property developers came in. Now the widows infest our garage, the underside of our cars, and anything that gets left in the backyard.
The way I see it, this mantis is keeping my home widow-free. At least the front yard. So I will never rid the area completely of the dried ferns. For as long as it continues keeping the front of my home widow-free, this is its home too.
