Lick it Like An Ice Cream Cone

Oscar found a brown praying mantis on a Tuesday. I found a larger green praying mantis on Thursday. We bottled them up together along with one daddy long leg spider, five grasshoppers, a millipede, some zucchini leaves and a stick.

On Friday we found the green praying mantis nibbling out of the back of one of the grasshoppers. Surprisingly the grasshopper survived for quite a few hours with a gaping hole in his back, it was a crazy hole to look into.

On Friday night, both mantids were alive and well, although the poor grasshopper, who had been a partial afternoon snack, laid ripped in two pieces at the bottom of the pickle jar.

On Saturday afternoon the green praying mantis sat perched atop the stick. His long front legs were grasped tightly around the bottom half of the brown praying mantis. We watched, mesmerized as the green guy ate out the insides of his fellow mantid. He sat there licking out the guts the way you would lick an ice cream cone. Fascinating.

Upon searching the organic remains at the bottom of the pickle jar, we found it, the top half of the brown praying mantis. His legs were still twitching as though he had not yet come to accept the actuality of his recent bodily separation.

Fascinating and disgusting. A perfect combination.