my evil little baby

Last year, I caught a praying mantis on the door to my apartment. We kept it in a cage in our lab and fed it live insects that we would hunt for around the lab and campus. Mostly, she got crickets and some kind of shield bug that seems fairly common in the area. Once, she got a giant grasshopper. That was pretty gross. She was an awesome pet cuz she just looked so evil when hunting her prey. She liked to hang from the top of the cage. I think she could only see motion, not still insects. But when the little bugger would move, she would stay absolutely still, except for her head, which would turn all Exorcist-like to stare. Then, she would creep very slowly until she was just above her prey, then pounce and grab it in her claws. Even though she was only about 4 inches long, I was kinda afraid of her. She would eat her food live, while it struggled in her claws. She would start at whatever part was most convenient, as the bug's struggle was pretty futile to her. She would eat every part -- antennae, legs, brains, ooey-gooey guts -- except for whatever excrement remained at the core of the bug. Here is a fact I'm sure you wanted to know -- the half-eaten shield bugs had a grassy, herby, sweet smell, not at all unpleasant; this is strange cuz shield bug is synonymous with stink bug. Maybe I'm weird, I didn't think they were all that stinky.

My mantis died last fall a few days after laying a really nasty looking egg sac. Apparently, the eggs hatched this spring and a couple manti survived briefly, but we were not around that weekend to feed them and they all died. The picture above shows her eating one of the above discussed shield bugs. Isn't she precious? This is the first meal we fed her. We were ecstatic that she had caught the bug we threw in her cage. RIP, my evil little baby.