The surprise is that the photo was in focus, given how I was holding the camera while coping with a praying mantis climbing my arm. Image: Su Leslie, 2017
After witnessing a praying mantis snacking on the last (yes last) Monarch caterpillar the other day, I’ve taken to patrolling the milkweed plants and surrounds to protect the remaining chrysalis and new butterflies from these cute, but lethal beasties.
Zimmerbitch 
Well done for this shot!
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Thanks Sue. 🙂
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How could you do it? I would be swiping away at it……. chuckle
Leslie
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Hehe. 🙂
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😉
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I remember being told as a child that it was illegal to kill a praying mantis because they were such helpful insects. I just looked it up and found out that it’s not true, but a longstanding myth! Don’t kill it anyway!
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I try never to kill things; just move them to a new location. Except mosquitoes — I kill mosquitoes!
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I kill ticks also. I hate ticks. You get them in NZ?
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We do have a variety of ticks, but mostly they seem to feed on animals. I guess that will change though as there are more and more people, animals and stuff coming here from overseas.
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Sorry—hope we don’t bring Lyme to your country.
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🙂 It’s unavoidable really. I love travel (and lots of things that are imported), so can hardly expect people to stay home or not export stuff to keep NZ bug-free. Both Maori and European settlement made huge changes to the indigeneous flora and fauna. There’s no going back.
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True all over the world. There are lots of pests, animal and plant, here that were
not indigenous to the US.
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What a beautiful surprise..
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Thank you 🙂
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Cool shot and bummer about them moving into your little habitat!
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Thanks. I’m trying not to mess with nature too much, but Monarchs are under environmental pressure, so I feel ok about moving the mantises on somewhere else.
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Great shot! And such a cheeky expression he has!
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🙂 Yes, almost like he was posing for the camera.
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Exactly!
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WoW! What a shot! I would never have been able to do that! Did it crawl higher?? 😉 Love the idea of you patrolling the milkweed to protect the monarchs – quite the bodyguard you have become 😉 xxxxxxx
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I got it off my arm just after I took the photo 🙂 I moved it to the vegetable garden in the hope it would eat the slugs or something. If I was a school kid I’m sure I’d get some sort of badge or sticker for all this 🙂
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Once a scout, always a scout! 😉 You definitely earned that badge! 🙂
Do they eat slugs? That would be perfect! Normally I kind of like slugs but not if they are happily eating away at my plants! Then I take them up and let them flyyyyy into the next big bush! 😉
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🙂 Now that the butterflies are all hatched I’ll have to spend my time patrolling the vegetable garden more carefully to get rid of the slugs and snails. Apparently praying mantis will eat just about anything, so if I wanted to use them as pest control, I’d have to be careful they didn’t eat the “good” bugs as well. 🙂
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Ah, those darn little cuties with the alien eyes! 😉 Hoovering anything that isn´t up in the air in a second… 😀
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I keep finding them on the back door-step — I hope they haven’t developed a taste for me.
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Nah, they just like you, that´s all 😉 They wouldn’t dare to bite the hand that feeds them. But I would get suspicious if they come near you when you sleep! 😉
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Now you’ve got me worried. Thankfully, it’s getting cold at night and I don’t sleep with the windows wide open any more.:-)
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