Our Summer with Minerva, Our Garden Mantis

June 23 - I discovered a small (young) praying mantis on one of the pepper plants in our garden. I have been fascinated by these intelligent creatures since I was a little boy. I even had one as a pet one summer. Just ask my sister, she'll tell you!  We've decided to name her Minerva after the Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. It seemed appropriate. Here is a photo of her.  I am going to make regular journal entries of her activities throughout the summer. So this blog section will be updated regularly, as long as she is with us.

Mantises are good to have in a vegetable garden because they prey on insect pests that can destroy your plants. Minerva likes to hang out in the part of our garden where we've planted hot peppers - Calabrese peppers, hot cherry peppers, and lemon peppers. 

I'm referring to our mantis a female but I could be wrong. It's difficult to tell the sex of one when they are young.  As they get older, there are several anatomical features that help telling males from females - males have 8 segments to their abdomens, females have 6, adult females are much larger than the males and they have broader abdomens (bellies & "hips"). Looks like male mantises might be natural chubby chasers. I have't been able to get a good count on Minerva's abdomen segments so I'm sticking with our mantis being a girl.

OK, Myth Killer - There has been some misunderstanding about mantis mating behavior. The popular belief is that the female kills and devours the male after mating, like black widow spiders do. But this is not always the case. Researches have found that this happens only about 30% of the time, so it's kind of a crap shoot for the male. Talk about fear of intimacy issues!

June 24 - Here she is chowing down on some other insect she's snagged.

July 3 - My morning visit with Minerva. She's getting bigger and becoming comfortable with me and isn't afraid to climb on my hand.

July 5 - Just a pic I took today.  

July 10 - Bought three praying mantis egg cases recently. Baby mantises hatched out of one of them this morning. But not without a little drama - a spider was skulking nearby as you can see in the second and third pics and went after the newborns. The baby mantises are too young and small to mount any kind of a spider beat down, so I helped. The spider is now gone.

July 11 - Minerva has remained perfectly still for hours in this upside down position beside a Calabrese pepper. My only thought is that she is lying in wait for an unsuspecting insect by making herself look as much as possible like one of the peppers.  Every now and then I go outside and check.

July 12 - So this morning I'm poking around in the garden and find this - the molted exoskeleton of our garden mantis! Looks like Minerva is going through a growth spurt. In order to grow, mantises must molt their skin, their exoskeleton as they get bigger.  I knew she wasn't feeling well yesterday, hanging upside down, feeling bloated and head achy. Now I know why...   She'll get her appetite back now. This is a photo of the molted exoskeleton of Minerva. Lisa says it looks like she was dancing when she disrobed. A little salsa number...

July 13 - Found this little guy today on the same pepper plant Minerva likes. He's only about 3/4 inch long.

July 15 - This is our cat Cow lounging among our pepper plants and above is Minerva. Thankfully, he didn't even notice her!

July 16 - Pics

July 26 - Minerva eating what looks like a wasp or yellow jacket. Still staying onthe same 2 -3 pepper plants. 

July 28 - 

August 3 - 

Checked the garden this morning and saw that Minerva had gone through her final molting and got her wings - 

August 6 - Guarding the cherry peppers

August 8 - Minerva snagged herself a bumble bee who was snooping around looking for nectar on the basil flowers. You can see she has already devoured the head. The bumble bee never knew what happened.

August 17 - Minerva and Zinny

August 22 - Close up in the basil

August 28 - Close up in the cherry peppers

September 4 - Minerva is pregnant! See the enlarged abdomen. We didn't even know she was seeing anyone! Soon she will be looking for a safe secure place to lay her eggs. She will secrete a protective coating around them that will harden to a consistency similar to styrofoam that will protect and insulate the eggs through the winter. Next spring several hundred mantises will hatch out. Only a few will survive to adulthood, most being eaten by birds, other insects, spiders or each other. 

September 9 - Haven’t seen Minerva since last Thursday. Searched all over the usual plants and areas of the garden where she can always be found. No sign of her. My guess is that she found a place to build an egg case for her future mantises. I think female mantises die after they lay their eggs so there is probably not much chance of seeing her again. But I will look for the egg case. It’s somewhere out there. This has been quite an interesting and fun saga watching her life cycle from baby to adult to “mother”. We’ve had a lot of fun ascribing human qualities to her. I’m glad I had photos all along the way documenting her life.

September 12 - Whoah, look who's back! Lisa spotted Minerva this morning back in her favorite haunt - the peppers, after 9 days away, having slimmed down after her "pregnancy". I didn't know mantises could lay more than one egg case a season, but they can, sometimes 3 - 4, as I found out this morning after checking a number sources. Maybe more "litters" ahead.

September 17 - Looks like Minerva is pregnant again!

September 21 These are the last photos of Minerva. have not seen her since this day