There was a cold snap last May in Pueblo right around the time praying mantises typically hatch out. Overnight low temperatures averaged in the mid-30s during for about a week at that time and I’m guessing it put a dent in the resident insect population as a result. Why do I think that? It’s been a lean mantis season around the house. There’s been an absence of katydids here, too.
Usually by September I’ve encountered a handful of mantises in the yard, but this year I had only spotted one, in mid-July. It was scurrying across the ground in the carport. Sadly, Rafa spotted it and— boom, it was gone, just like that, wolfed it down in an instant.
I didn’t see another mantis until the first week in September. It was a female, dead as a doornail, and it was being picked apart by swarming ants. It was odd seeing one of the apex garden predators being dismantled like that. Monica’s reaction was more succinct; “that’s gross,” she said.
A couple days after spotting that ant-riddled praying mantis, I came across another female mantis that was very much alive. In the midst of hanging upside-down from a rose, clutched in one of her spiked arms was a bee, and she was feeding on it. It was something I’d never before. Not in our yard, anyways.
That may bode well for next spring’s generation of mantises. She still needs to lay low for the next month or so and avoid those pesky concerns like getting eaten or stung by prey long enough to mate and lay eggs. I guess we’ll see come May how it worked out.
