MantisMania

About a month ago now, Joshua and his second grade class at Barnett Shoals Elementary started a series of lessons on insects. Mrs. Ayoob (she's from Maine. That's all I know. I wondered about the origin of that name myself, but didn't get around to asking her about it.) made the mistake of asking the class to bring in a praying mantis. I don't know why she did this, but she did. And Joshua, being the Joshua that we know and love, treated it as if it were a holy commission.
He pestered the life out of me for three solid weeks about finding a praying mantis for his class. "Where do praying mantises live? Do they live on the ground? Or in trees?" These are questions we had to look up on the internet. After wikipedia and repeated trips to the library, I think I now know more about your everyday praying mantis than anyone else in the world. Like the fact that there are about 2,500 mantis species worldwide and that only about 20 live in the United States. They're exclusively opportunistic ambush predators and also practice cannibalism.
With this information in hand, Joshua and I set off one afternoon to our local park. Two knights perilous on a quest. I had no idea where to find a praying mantis but I wasn't really fond of the idea of letting Joshua know that I didn't know. He still thinks I'm the smartest guy in the world and I want to keep that up until he's at least thirty.
If you can imagine a grown man and a seven year old looking high and low for an insect that didn't want to be found. I've lived in Georgia my entire life and I think I may have stumbled across two or three of these bugs, and those were complete accidents.
Needless to say, we came home disappointed. Joshua went to school for the duration of his insect studies dragging his coat and mumbling his words because he couldn't find a praying mantis. The fact that no one else found one either was only a small comfort.
Today, however, was his lucky day. I walked out of the house this morning and what do I see on the hood of my car? You guessed it. A common Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis carolina), a brown little critter with wings that is about four inches long.
I caught the little bugger, put it into a jar with holes in the lid, and waited for Joshua to get home. You would've thought that I bought him a car or something. He danced around and sang songs for the whole evening about how he had finally found a praying mantis. The fact that it was a total coincidence was totally forgotten.
Mandy the Mantis (named so because the girl mantises eat the boy mantises.) was taken to Mrs. Ayoob's class and was declared to be a class pet. Hopefully she'll last for a few months. After all, who's going to catch all the crickets for her to eat? Not me.