Bugs: A Visitor of Biggish-Small Proportions

One day, about a week after moving into our new apartment, I saw a pretty big mantis chilling out on the railing outside our third-floor apartment. As impressive as he or she was, I have seen such things before. We do live over and around plenty of rice fields.



Anyway, the next day - perhaps it was - I saw it again. This time outside my window. What I hadn't realized was that I not only left my window open (seeing as it was searing hot and wanted some air), but also the mesh slider that was supposed to cover the opening. So, the following morning, I awoke, stumbled into the front room, spun about looking for something, only to find this guy hanging on my ceiling. Confused, dazed and quite a squealer when it comes to bugs, I was quite content on leaving the five-inch bastard where it was.



A while later, I noticed that it had shimmied over onto the curtain for some reason. Afraid that it would come down off of it, and perhaps hurt the baby with those razors-for-arms, I thought a good idea to herd it out the window. Grabbing a piece of cardboard and my trusty wifekick, we tried nudging it out down. My wife tried picking it up at one point, but it was glued in place. Then it began it's little dance and struck out REAL quick, add some small but impressive lacerations to the cardboard. After about a ten minute struggle, the wife found a way to get it out. and all was well.