What started out like a typical Tuesday homeschool day at our house,
ended abruptly at 7:50 when the first praying mantis was spotted.
You see, about 2 or 3 month ago, Amber had found a praying mantis 'nest' on a sprig of pine.
And me, being the homeschool mama that I am,
thought that it would be a great idea to put it in the school room.
I need to say here,
that I am very challenged when it comes to Science.
Very, being interpreted, extremely.
But me, with my eagerness to learn, had high hopes of,
come some Spring day, watching some mantis hatch....
And it felt good to have a 'real' live nest on my bookshelf....
Not realizing 'spring' might come early, like in January....
Had I known this, I would have put the nest in a jar. I think.
I mean I think I would have thought of that.
Challenged, remember?
The other thing I guess I was naively expecting was several mantis.
Not like, scores of them....
The first one was spotted on Amber's Math book.
Then, well everywhere....everywhere in the vicinity of the nest.
We vacuumed most of them up...
And resumed our school, scritching and scratching, and feeling so buggy....
And then it dawned on me...
"I should have saved several to watch them grow".
Not a worry, because in no time we had found 18-20 that had emerged since the vacuum went through.
I quickly placed two spinach leaves in for them to gnaw on.
Felt smug about the good food I was offering them,
till Tara informed me they are 'carnivores'.
Blank stare...oh yes, they eat other bugs. O boy.
We left them to hopefully eat the greens, and offered them a dead spider,
which they politely refused to eat....Till our Daddy came home.
He, unlike me, is not challenged.
And, after a trip to the neighbor's chicken house,
we had flies to feed them....
I don't know whether any will survive for any period of time.
But I do know that we had fun today,
and I'm pretty sure it's not something any of us will forget right away.
And, it was a good Science lesson....especially for Mama.
