Praying Mantis and the hoard of Hoppers

What do you get when you let your grass grown two feet tall in the late summer? A perfect spot for hoppers and dozens of other insects. On a weekend past we finally got around to mowing down the ever growing pasture area. Grandpa was running the tractor. We were busy running around outside. Grandpa always watchful when he mowed saw a strange movement. We caught what he’d found:

She or perhaps He was huge. This Praying Mantis measured at least 6 inches long. It spent a long time watching the boys. That was a little freaky! It actually turned its head to look at Jr. with his buggy little eyes.

As much fun as it was watching the Mantis it was just as much fun catching it! The grass had been a haven to hundreds of grasshoppers. As we were walking over to find out what Grandpa had seen we were suddenly in the midst of a hoard of hoppers all scrambling and hopping away from the just mowed grass. We saw at least eight distinct varieties of grasshoppers. There were brown ones, green ones, bright green ones, tiny one, big ones and even a few that kept us company for a bit. (Those photos did not turn out). It was a strange procession to watch all the hoppers moving to new grounds. It was also really neat to see how many different insects came out of the grass along with our hoard of hoppers. It was sort of like we’d mowed over Hoptropolis the insect city!