Introducing: Maurice, the Praying Mantis

Maurice the praying mantis gave me a big scare. He lives in the tallest borage plant in the herb patch, where I hope he’s snacking on all the aphids and mealie bugs. I hope because he refuses to eat anything while I watch; he just flips upside down and licks his forearms, and then stares at me like he’s terribly amused.

In a staring competition, he would certainly win.

Well, while I was checking him out in situ, I noticed lots of small, black things on the leaves and stalks of the borage plant. They were strangely shaped, round but slightly stretched, with something white sticking out of the flatter end. I didn’t want to touch them, so I brushed them into a bowl. They were hard, and striated.

What were they? Some strange egg laid by a new bug, set to hatch and eat my plant? Maybe Maurice’s poop? Maybe Maurice’s… eggs? I dashed inside and googled ‘praying mantis egg’, and proceeded to learn many interesting things about praying mantises, their eggs (charmingly called oothecas), and the strange people online who are obsessed with them. No, definitely not an egg. To my amazement, no one has yet thought to put a picture of praying mantis poop on the internet (so there are virtual leaves still left unturned!). I returned to the borage plant and Maurice to ponder further. He was upside down, and looking terribly smug, almost close to… laughing. I peered in closer (but not too close – I think he’s waiting for me to get within jumping distance) and them I noticed another black… thing, inside one of the borage flower calyx. I shook the flower. It wouldn’t come off. At which point it dawned on me that the black things come from the flowers. Otherwise known as… seeds. Duh. I simply hadn’t noticed them before because borage seeds are brown and look perfectly round until they are totally mature, when they turn dark, dark brown, and fall off – revealing a flat end with white tissue sticking out, like a razor clam from its shell (or a particularly disgusting tongue from a mouth). And since borage plants are so hairy, the seeds stick to whatever they fall on, including the leaves.

Mystery solved! Although I felt pretty let down by Maurice and the prospect of babies. Even baby praying mantises are pretty cute. It turns out that praying mantises lay big white cocoon like nests for their babies in the autumn, and they only hatch in the spring. And since Maurice has been here only a week or so, it would be super-mantis of him (or her) to already have babies running around now.

I spent a slightly subdued half-hour collecting all the seeds I could see (I’m a seed saver after all, and even if disappointing, the black alien cocoons are still seed). Maurice continued to mock my stupidity from afar, rocking from side to side with laughter. But as I moved away from the final borage plant (a very anaemic creature, potbound too long and guiltily transplanted by me to a less-than-ausicious position next to the compost bin), something moved on the top leaves. It was almost microscopic, the movemnt, and I don’t know how I saw it, but as I moved in closer I almost couldn’t believe it… not one, but two baby praying mantises!

 

Tiny, tiny babies, maybe 5mm long, and correspondingly fragile and skinny . Like all praying mantises, they have the personalities of particularly irritable prize fighters, weaving and ducking the often imaginary enemy. While they’re certainly not Maurice’s offspring, I am touched by their presence here. And hope they’re smart enough to steer clear of Maurice, on his neighbouring borage plant lookout tour, since praying mantises are, among their many gifts, very cheerful cannibals. In the meanwhile, I will think of names for the Terrible Twins, something which does justice to their ninja personalities.

One more fact before I leave you, gleaned from my day’s research (nothing is ever wasted): while we all know that most female praying mantises eat the heads of their mates while copulating, did you know that certain types of male praying mantises will only release their sperm sac once their head is removed?

Worth thinking about, surely.