I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
That column was about the “hidden beauty” of our drought-stricken summer, and in it I mentioned a praying mantis that had taken up residence on one of our hummingbird feeders. With that revelation going public, my readers took pen in hand, or in some cases, pulled their chairs up to a computer keyboard. But, one way or the other, they got their letters to me, and for that reason alone, I just had to read more about “mantids” and why people find them so interesting.
We have always had an abundance of praying mantises on our property, which is to my understanding, a good sign, both literally and figuratively. We have large hedges at the northernmost corners of our house, and I have seen mantises making their way through and over them like mountain climbers, silently complaining, I suppose, that the racket of my mower and weed whacker was interrupting their quests in search of a meal. Mantids have always been touted as beneficial insects, and it is true that they eat many garden pests like aphids and gnats, even the moths who leave their disgusting and hungry larvae on my shrubs.
In reality, however, praying mantises are gluttonous, voracious eating machines that consume just about anything they can catch, including the gentle and beautiful and pollinating insects who often become snack food before they can produce proper non-pest ID.
Nearly every letter writer wanted me to know that the mantis my wife had been scooting off her feeders in the evenings wasn’t there to share a slurp of sugar water with our hummingbirds. It was there, in all probability, to snare and eat a bird, something that I wouldn’t have believed had I not subsequently seen so much literature on the subject, even watched a rather gruesome home video of such an assault that the faint-of-heart should avoid.
Emailer Norma Plasack wrote, “It might be a good idea to take your praying mantis for a walk into the woods and hope he doesn’t find his way back.” So, we did just that, but since we didn’t take prints or mugshots, we had no way of knowing if the mantis my wife found on the same feeder a few days later was the same one we had carted off.
I also received a note from a writer who identified herself only as Elizabeth. She wrote: “When I saw your photo of the praying mantis on the hummingbird feeder, it reminded me of how excited I was to have one on my hummingbird feeder last summer. I also took a good photo of it. Since then, ‘Birds and Blooms’ magazine has informed us that the praying mantis is a hummingbird predator!”
“Birds and Blooms” must have a circulation that rivals “Newsweek,” because I heard from a whole host of other folks who had read the same story. Pat Fash, one of my Illinois readers, said she discovered a mantis eating a hummer on one of her feeders. After brushing it away, she found the same mantis on the feeder the very next day, so Pat’s husband was forced to do what he had to do…
There are actually three species of praying mantises in the Midwest, and about 2,000 species worldwide. According to Purdue entomologist Tom Turpin, there are about 20 species in the United States. The clan that has staked out a homestead on our place could be a European (Mantis religiosa), a Chinese (Tenodera aridifolia), or a Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis Carolina). Considering its considerable size, our friend was probably both female and of the Chinese variety, although I doubt whether it will ever grow to rival the largest-known mantis that was spotted in southern China in 1929.
It was measured at 18 inches in length, which I don’t mind saying, sends a shiver up my spine and vaguely reminds me of an old science fiction movie I watched on the “Early Show” years ago.
The word “mantis” originated with the Greeks; it literally means “diviner” or “fortune-teller.” For that rather mystic reason, praying mantises seem to be steeped in folklore. In an article printed about a year ago by Carol Michel, the author quotes William Atherton Dupuy, whose “Insect Friends and Foes” was first printed in 1925. Dupuy wrote that the English came to call mantises “soothsayers,” and that many old-timers believed that the direction of a pointing mantis could lead lost children back home. It was also believed that young French women looked for mantises to point out the places from which their lovers would come.
In the scientific world, the praying mantis is an interesting study. Equipped with a head that can rotate 180 degrees, it can see and hear exceedingly well, while its antennae are “most likely used for smell.” Mantids do primarily eat insects, but they are arrogant enough to believe that the occasional frog or small mammal is fair game, too. In turn, bats, snakes, birds and large frogs are more than willing to dine on mantises. If that doesn’t happen, they cannibalize their own kind — which often happens to male mantises just after mating with the larger, more physical females. They really aren’t very finicky eaters at all. As friend Deanna Sinclair wrote in her letter to me, “When the mantises mate, it is a short honeymoon. The female bites the head off her mate.”
Our nights are getting cooler now; fall is in the air and creeping ever so closer on our calendars. In years when the winters are very mild, mantises have been known to live quite a while, but, for most part, they lay their eggs (which overwinter under a stem or leaf), and succumb to the cold and frost. So, not long after our hummingbirds have put up the storm windows, packed their bags and taken off for the Yucatan, our mantises are already counting their days. Some mantises can, in fact, fly, but they’re built for local commutes only.
It is said that just sighting a praying mantis is a sign of good luck. If that is the case, we have been blessed many times this summer. In folklore, the praying mantis has also been called a “rearhorse,” a “mule killer,” and “the devil’s coachman,” the latter epithet used because they appear to be holding the reins of a horse-drawn carriage.
We’ll look for mantises on our feeders next year, but I want to tell them right now: We know exactly what you’re up to.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by email at hickory913@aol.com, or c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. He’ll be speaking to the “After 5 Women’s Christian Club of Terre Haute” at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College on Tuesday night.
Mike Lunsford
Related Photos
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Friend or foe?: Not content with eating "harmful" insects, the mantis will eat just about anything it can catch, including hummingbirds from a backyard feeder. (Tribune-Star file/Jim Avelis)
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Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Okla. Teens Get Video of Deadly Tornado Overhead
Raw: Aftermath of Deadly Attack in London
Man Shot While Questioned in Boston Probe
Britain Attack Believed Linked to Radical Islam
Raw: Kevin Durant Tours Moore After $1M Pledge
Texas Students Coach Teachers on Fitness
Raw: Scuffles in London After Hacking Death
School Storm Protection Spotty in Tornado Zones
9-year-old Tornado Victim Loved Family, Singing
Chain-Reaction School Bus Crash Injures About 50
Weiner Launches Bid to Become NYC Mayor
Moore Native Toby Keith Tours Tornado Damage
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Today in History May 22
Johnson: Don't Blame Islam or UK Policy
Raw: Costa Rica Volcano Roars to Life
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Meet MJ, the Bike Riding Tabby Cat
New Forecasting Tool Eyed for Hurricane Season
Today in History May 23
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
