Praying Mantis

Austin came upon a praying mantis today. I would have had no idea that was what it  was, but he did.  How did he know that? Funny how things that you didn’t know your kids knew will sneak up on you! He was so proud of his discovery.  He spent two hours outside just watching it crawl around and moving it around with a stick.

                                                             

We did a quick search on the internet.  He loved that it is called a praying mantis because of how he stands when he is preying on another insect. He stands on his back legs, arms raised and mouth dropped wide open to intimidate the other insect.  We couldn’t get a good picture of it but it looks something like this:



He thought this quite funny and fell over laughing every single time our mantis decided to do this.  After waiting on daddy and brother to get home so he could show them and after quite some time trying to get him to eat a grasshopper, he took him to his favorite tree to let him go.  Every time we’ve been outside since he will run over to the tree in hopes of seeing his little friend again