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Two or three days ago, my wife and I saw a very unusual praying mantis on our deck. It was small, and gray, mottled with white and black, and very pretty.

Well, wife did some research, and it turns out that THAT is the real native praying mantis, and the big green ones that I grew up with are an invasive species that has almost wiped out the littler native beauty!

I’m pretty old, and spend a lot of my life outdoors, how did I not know this??

I’m on my phone now, but when I get a chance, if there’s any interest, I’ll post pictures of the gray mantis. I’m just shocked to learn that the praying mantis I always knew is an invasive species, and has virtually killed off our native mantis. Live and learn!!

I'd like to see it.

I didn't know about that either. Learn something every day if you're not careful.

Today while taking the shade cloth off of my greenhouse, I discovered an egg mass from the native praying mantis. Like the mantis itself, the egg mass is similar to the invasive mantis, but just different enough to make you look twice. I’m tickled to see at least one female got to reproduce around here.

I did not know this either and I would like to see some pics as well.

Dieselrider wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 2:02 pm I did not know this either and I would like to see some pics as well.

Hey Paul, I hate to ask, but would it be easy for you to post the pictures I sent you? If not, I will get to it eventually…

Being from the MS-DOS era when 10MB was an unimaginably huge hard drive, I'm in the habit of running a tight ship and deleting anything that doesn't absolutely need to be saved.

Which is a round-about way of saying I deleted that email...

I, too, am a DOS baby. But I am also a pack rat, which is why I have a multi-terabyte hard drive and don’t throw anything away. I will get around to posting them, just need to find some time to reduce their size and actually post.

Cheers!