If you guessed a whole package of birthday cake Oreos, you're wrong. 'Cause I ate the last of those yesterday.
If you guessed a hobbit, you're also wrong. Though that would be cool.
If you guessed praying mantises, you're right! I give you an A for good reading comprehension skillz. Since praying mantises are in the title and all.
There are four of them! Greenie Mantis, Rosie Mantis, Blanco Mantis, and Crimson Mantis. No, those aren't actually their real names, just names I am giving them so that they can be anonymous on this blog. I use pseudonyms to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the mantises alike. Yeah, you'd think praying mantises wouldn't need anonymity, but you just never know. Maybe they're being targeted by the Mantis Mafia.
Besides, the pseudonyms are more to protect their owner, my friend Porch. Porch is visiting his grandparents for two weeks, and he asked me to take care of his beloved pet mantises while he is gone. So I've changed the names of his praying mantises in order to obscure his identity and make him interchangeable with all the other people who own four pet praying mantises and leave them with an awkward friend whilst on vacation.
...
...
...It's foolproof I tell you.
Porch said his mantises would require (and I quote) "food, water, and lots of love."
I could do food. I could do water. And I am positively overflowing with love, so I agreed to open my home up to Greenie, Rosie, Blanco, and Crimson.
Presently, Porch arrived at my house, toting the praying mantises and spouting instructions.
PORCH: You can spray them with this spray bottle every day. That's their water.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (enthusiastically) Okay!
PORCH: You can feed them every three or four days. Here are some fly pupae.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (enthusiastically) Okay!
PORCH: You'll have to put them in your fridge.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (slightly less enthusiastically) Okay...
PORCH: By the way, there's a chance they might die while I'm gone. They're reaching the end of their life cycle.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (not enthusiastic at all) O...kay...
PORCH: Also, Greenie and Rosie might lay some eggs.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: O...
PORCH: If they do, just leave them there. They're infertile.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...kay... how do you know?
PORCH: Because when I tried to get them to mate with Crimson, they didn't do anything. And then I split them up real fast because I was afraid they'd eat him.
PORCH: If you're feeling adventurous, you can try to mate them and then if he gets eaten, just tell me he died of old age.
PORCH: I'm just kidding. Please don't actually do that.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (faintly) ...okay...
I quickly gathered the threads of my courage and screwed it to the sticking place or whatever that one William Shakespeare dude said in that one MacBeth thing.
PORCH: (on the porch) Thanks for watching them!
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (courage screwed tight to the sticking place) Pssh. They're just like children. Small... green... spiky... cannibalistic children. I'm good with children.
Indeed, I do have excellent children skillz which are easily adapted into mantis skillz.
Each day when I wake up, I turn to the mantises, who are living on my bedside table in a space I cleared for them next to my Precious Moments Mulan doll. I cheerily greet them by name, like so: "Good morning, Greenie! Good morning, Rosie! Blanco! Crimson!" as I spray them with their daily water.
Now, the praying mantises don't do much. Really they just sit in their little habitat jars, hanging out in the leaves or on the wall or on the ceiling. So for a while I wasn't sure how my daily greeting was being received, but then I figured out how to read the mantises' expressions. When they're happy to see you, they're all
When they're annoyed, they're like
When they think your jokes are lame, they're all
And when they want a cable-knit sweater, they go
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Because of my expressive guests, I've had a lot more traffic in my room than usual. As soon as the mantises were settled, my parents and siblings made pilgrimage one by one to see Porch's pet insects.
"Ooooh," they all said. "Ahhhh." And then, invariably, "What are the sponges for?"
For you see, the jar-habitats of the praying mantises are done up like so: Each has a side of the jar cut away and replaced with netting for breathing purposes, and each has a small square hole cut near the top and stopped up with a sponge.
"I'm not sure what the sponges are for," I admitted. "Porch didn't say."
Then there were the grasshoppers. When Porch brought his pets to my house, there was also a grasshopper in each jar, for the mantises to attack and eat at their leisure.
For the first few days that I had the mantises, when I checked to make sure none of them had died I would also check on the grasshoppers to see if they'd been eaten yet. No, they had not. They were just there, sitting around like the praying mantises, which was all fine and dandy except for the fact that they were TRAPPED IN A JAR WITH A PREDATOR. You'd think the grasshoppers would, like, be moving around to avoid the mantises if not actively trying to escape.
But no. No escaping. No avoiding. No moving except for the occasional hop that made a little thwack sound against the plastic of the jar.
Either those grasshoppers had come to terms with their impending deaths, or they were just really stupid.
Days went by. I sprayed the mantises, and they made various facial expressions, and the grasshoppers sat around, and when I brought back some coconut chicken kurma and naan from an Indian restaurant I put them as far away from the pupae in the fridge as possible.
Then it was feeding day, and I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor with Greenie's jar in my lap, clutching the plastic container of fly pupae in terror.
Was I scared of Greenie? Of course not.
Was I scared of the fly pupae? No. I mean, it was kind of gross and kind of freaky, but I've long resigned myself to a future filled with gross, freaky things. (One word: childbirth.)
No, the terror in me stemmed not from insects but from a sudden thunderbolt of thought.
How was I supposed to get the pupae into the jar?
They were too big to poke through the netting. The only thing I could think of would be to take the lid off the jar, which opened up a whole realm of problems. Like, all of the praying mantises were currently clinging to the underside of the lids, so how I unscrew one without accidentally hurting them? And Blanco and Crimson had wings--what if while the jar was open, they flew away? How would I catch them again? What if I couldn't catch them again? What if one of them got out and I accidentally stepped on him? Or sat on him?
These were the thoughts that had set me a-trembling.
"Okay," I said to myself, "deep breaths. Deep breaths. You can do this."
Could I? That was still unclear. Regardless, it was clear that I had to. Letting the praying mantises starve and breaking Porch's heart was definitely not an option. Therefore, the mantises must be fed.
Therefore, the lids must come off.
Therefore, we were all doomed. The mantises perhaps to be sat on. Myself perhaps to scar my friend's confidence in me for life and beyond.
It couldn't be helped. Cautiously, I unscrewed the jar.
"Come here, Greenie," I said soothingly, turning over the lid and holding out my hand to the mantis. I've held her at Porch's before, and it was pretty easy. I just had to be considerate of her feelings.
Greenie inspected my fingers but made no move towards them.
"Come here. I'm not going to hurt you." With some careful maneuvering, I managed to scoop her up. Placing my hand in the jar, I tried to gently push her off my fingers and into her home.
She crawled farther up my arm instead.
"Uh..." At first she was going quite slow. Then I nudged her in the direction I wanted her to go, which she apparently took as a cue to scurry up my arm. Because that's what she did. Greenie ran right up like she was being chased and made a beeline (mantisline?) for my sleeve.
"ACK!" My other hand shot over and fished her out before she could cozy up in my underarm. "Get out!" She squirmed. I tried to hold her in a secure yet gentle grip and moved my hand back towards the jar.
Just then, there was a small sound.
A thwack.
The grasshopper had jumped.
The grasshopper. In all of my worst-case feeding scenarios, I had forgotten to factor in the grasshopper. I'd left the jar wide open because Greenie was in my hands and she couldn't escape, but the grasshopper could.
It landed on my bedroom carpet and flicked its antennae in a self-congratulatory manner.
"No no no no no." I flailed the hand not holding Greenie at the grasshopper in an effort to recapture. I would've, too, had it not hopped away a split-second before my fingers connected.
Greenie took this opportunity to once again make a break for my sleeve.
"AUUUUUURGH." At this moment I was forced to reevaluate my life. I was trying to put fly pupae in a jar. A praying mantis wanted to take up residence in my armpit. And now I had a grasshopper loose in my bedroom.
My bedroom. A grasshopper! Loose. Invading my space and hopping all over my stuff! Not cool.
How could Porch possibly feed four praying mantises every three to four days if feeding one of them was like being in a freaking war zone?!
....ohhhhh... the sponges.
This revelation gave me the motivation I needed. Somehow I got Greenie back in the jar, screwed the lid back on, and pulled out the little sponge. I stuck four pupae in through the tiny square hole and stopped it back up again. Easy peasy, one two threesie. I fed Rosie, Blanco, and Crimson successfully and crumpled against my bed in relief, where I breathed a sigh of relief and stared aimlessly at my hair accessory box.
All was well.
That is, except for the grasshopper running around in my room. That annoying little thing could be anywhere right now...
I squinted.
...or it could be sitting just a short hop away from where I had last seen it?
I jerked upright. Yup, that was the grasshopper, just sitting on the edge of my hair accessory box. No trying to hide itself. No hopping free in my room. Just hanging out there, doing absolutely nothing.
I ran to the kitchen for a plastic bag.
"Okay," I said to myself. "Softly now." My estimation of the grasshopper's intelligence had gone up enough that I assumed it would hop away if I spooked it. After all, not only had the grasshopper been smart enough to escape from the jar, it had also had the presence of mind to immediately jump a second time when I tried to recapture it.
Then again, it had taken about three minutes of the jar being open before it had actually made a break for it. And it was still just sitting there...
The omens for my success were mixed. Like a lioness on the prowl, I noiselessly crept across my bedroom carpet.
The grasshopper was in my sight.
I poised to spring.
The grasshopper did nothing.
I pounced! Surprising grace and agility came to my aid. I slammed the plastic bag down, and looked to see-
-that the grasshopper was still sitting in the same spot. It was right under the plastic bag. It was recaptured. It didn't react in the slightest.
When I pushed the grasshopper back in Greenie's jar by way of the sponge hole, it kind of quivered. Then it jumped to a twig and sat there. Just sat. Not paying even the least bit of attention to the mantis sitting dangerously near.
"Wow, grasshopper," I said, "you really have zero survival skillz."
Sure enough, the next day the grasshopper was gone. And Greenie was all, "Omigosh, where did it go?"
There were several insect legs littering the floor of her jar.
Ha! I loved this post!
ReplyDeleteWell thanks! It was way fun to write.
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