The moment you’ve all been waiting for… has FINALLY ARRIVED. YES FOLKS, everyone’s favorite SLOB, the divine Curly Wurly Gurly, has come to PHILLY. And I was there to document every fantabulous moment.
So go grab some candy, sit back, relax, and click HERE to watch the world premier of MY VERRRY FIRST MOVIE EVERRRR!!
WATCH OUT WORLD. FLAT CURLY COMES TO PHILLY!
ENJOY!!!
We have a large butterfly bush in our front yard which attracts a huge variety of insects. Butterflies (of course), as well as all types of bees, flies, – this year we even had a hummingbird! Pretty darn rare in the city. Anyway. b/c of the number of butterflies, this bush is also home to a large cadre of praying mantises. Mantids LOVE butterflies. Their tender juicy middles in particular. After gobbling them up, they drop the butterflies’ colorful but otherwise unappealing wings to the floor below. So all summer long, while I’m weeding the garden, my daughters are gathering up the wings like so many discarded petals.
When I was a kid I never saw a praying mantis. But I clearly remember people saying they were endangered, and telling me never to kill one. I believe it was illegal at the time (the 1980s), but I haven’t been able to confirm or deny that. All I know for certain is that mantids are thriving in 2008 – at least in our yard. If a postage-sized stamp of a garden in the middle of a city is any indication of the greater picture, I’d say they’re doing fine.
And yet each time we find a praying mantis, you’d think it was the very first time. We drop everything. Holla to each other. COME QUICK! B/c we all want to see. Their thoughtful eyes and slender grace are fascinating. My daughters found a small one several weeks ago – of all places, beneath a checkout in Trader Joes. They scooped him up, and carried him out of the store. He seemed happy to be free. But rather than hop off outside the exit, he rode for blocks on my older daughter’s hand. Only once we reached the Market Street bridge did he fly off, soaring stories into the sky.
We’ve been fortunate enough to capture several others over the years. Not in any box, but on film. My skillful husband took these photos a couple weeks ago of a pair mating, and I just had to share them. They are beautiful. The text is excerpted from the North Forty News. Many thanks for sharing.
PS: We now have a large egg case on one of the branches. Here’s to next year’s offspring!
This brings us to the delicate subject of mantid love – or, more precisely, mantid sexual behavior.
Slender adult male mantids, smaller than the female, usually feature brown tones in contrast to the female’s greens. They display rather slow, deliberate care around prospective mates, often approaching from the rear and leaping on the female’s ample back when close enough. Females warrant this caution, even though their substantial weight keeps them grounded while males can fly, because a female may hunger for a substantial meal more than sex.
Sometimes she wants both.
Even attached and fully engaged, a male may literally lose his head servicing his chosen female. The female can swivel her head in a disconcertingly human-like gesture and decapitate her suitor. This may not even interrupt the act at hand. One author states that “removal of the male’s head, the bit which the female eats first, releases the male’s genitalia from nervous inhibition from the brain and leads to incessant copulatory movements.”
The smartest–or the luckiest–males avoid this circumstance, however, leap off their temporarily groggy paramour and run quickly away. Such mortal danger may insure that only the smartest males live to mate again.
Once inseminated, a female searches for a plant stem or fence post suitable for making an egg case and laying her eggs. Usually she selects a location 1 to 4 feet off the ground and constructs a case that resembles tan foam with the texture of a roasted marshmallow. Chinese mantids build round cases; the Europeans flatten theirs on one side.
This past weekend we went camping with friends in Lenhartsville, PA, close to Hawk Mountain. We’d been planning the trip all last week, and everyone was EXCITED!! Though I haven’t done a whole lot of it, I actually enjoy camping. The fresh air, the dirt, the marshmallows. And even though it POURED Friday night, by Saturday everything was just fine. Or so we thought. Unfortunately we had not been briefed that *FAMILY CAMPGROUND* is really code language for WE HOUSE DERELICTS WHO LOVE TO PAR-TAY. Don’t get me wrong. We like drinking too. Of course we like drinking. It’s the only thing that makes camping tolerable. When the pluses of doing something include: 1) having an excuse not to brush your teeth, 2) getting to pee in the bushes, and 3) wondering who’s going to fall into the firepit, well – drinking is simply par for the course.
But let’s be reasonable. Quiet Hours were posted as 11 PM – 8 AM. I didn’t have a watch to check and being in the middle of the forest, didn’t have a clock to reference either. BUT I think we pretty much stuck to that. All of us – our good friends P & E, and S. We all have kids. We put our kids to sleep – well, except for GEORGIA, but that’s another story altogether. Yes, we were drinking. But we were not making this camping trip into the bacchanalian orgy that our neighbors so clearly took it to be.
I will be honest. The folks renting the campsite on the far side of us were simply ANIMALS. And they should have been rounded up at 3 am and sent to the stockyard. But as I am not yet in charge of the universe, they continued on ALL NIGHT LONG. AT one point I woke up and it sounded as though they were actually attacking a woman. I could not deduce from the screaming whether or not she was enjoying it. And I couldn’t have helped her even if I wanted to.
You see, I was pinioned between my younger daughter and a tent wall for most of these NOT-SO-QUIET-HOURS. B/c Georgia would not go to sleep. Oh no. At some point in the evening she spotted an insect in the kids tent, and refused to go inside. I don’t think the bug was even in the tent – just sandwiched between the top of the tent and the fly – but how do you reason THAT to a 4 year old? Needless to say, Georgia was bunking w/ us for the evening.
Unfortunately I am claustrophobic. ACUTELY CLAUSTROPHOBIC. As my husband and I were sharing a tent which comfortably sleeps 1, you can imagine how cozy it was w/ 3 of us. In order to get Georgia to sleep, I finally had to ZIP HER INTO MY SLEEPING BAG beside me. Rendering it more of a cocoon. I spent most of the night unable to move, smashed up against the side of the tent w/ the roof just inches from my face. It was like being trapped inside an MRI machine, except the noise of the hammers was replaced with drunken revelry from the campsite 2 down.
Nearing daybreak I Couldn’t take ANYMORE. I woke my husband long enough to unzip me from my iron maiden and I hightailed it to the spacious kids tent next door. There I spent the next 2 hours, sleeping intermittently, trying my best to squash my tall frame into a toddler’s size sleeping bag. Even w/ four feet in my face, compared to my previous accommodation, it was HEAVEN.
Lest you think the trip was sheer torture, the art reception we’d attended the night before – w/ its scrumptious catered food and WINE BAR – was simply wonderful. As was seeing the Blue Rocks Boulder Field, a glacial river of rock, parked literally beside our campsite. Being w/ our beloved friends, whose company makes any situation bearable, was marvelous. AND for the sheer fact that it didn’t RAIN, I will be eternally grateful. But being trapped next to prison escapees, NOT SO HOT. I may never do it again. At least until the memory fades. Which given the way I drink, could be as soon as next week.
CLICK HERE for all the fun in photos.