My Stupid Mantis

So I'm prepping the cows to be milked.
You can't just milk a cow. Teats get dirty you know.
We don't pasteurize the milk, sanitation is of the utmost.
I have to separate the cow to be milked, spray it with a mild detergent, hose it down, scrub the teatsm dry the teats...
So I'm prepping the cow to be milked, and I see a praying mantis.
I'm all photobrained lately, so I scoop it up in one of the blue paper cups that my sister Mary sent with the milking supplies (a mantis cup, i suppose) and i semi-seal it in a gallon-sized ziploc bag. You can't totally seal a mantis off from air, of course.

So all the while I'm milking, I'm proud of my mantis. I'm going to take beaucoup foto of my mantis. I'm looking forward to this.
Nothing on my ipod could satisfy me that morning. Michael A. Stackpole was driving me nuts. I don't know why he doesn't just do his podcasts off the cuff, or with notes. He seems to insist on READING them from a paper. Granted, he's a "published author with thirty-eight books to my credit, eight of which were NY best sellers and Star Wars books", but I can't STAND when something SOUNDS read. So Mur Lafferty hadn't podcasted for the week yet, and Fiona Apple was letting me down, and Radiohead just wasn't sexy to me...I decided to relisten to Focus' amazing dramatization of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. And I'm glad I did. It got me thinking about what a poser Doug Gresham is, because ISN'T he American? You wouldn't know it with that sodding limey accent.

I've gone off of my course.

My Stupid Mantis.

So I've finished milking and I'm back up at the house right here in my office and I see a fly.
"What a delightful lunch my mantis shall have." I thought. So I found Mom's new CRUEL fly swatter (the one with the metal grill and the batteries that SHOCK the flies to death) and I stunned me a couple of winged creatures. I tossed them into the jar with the mantis, and he wouldn't touch them! They came back to life and he still didn't do any of his kung fu on them.
So I wait some more. He poops. Ever seen a mantis poop, or any other insect for that matter? Me either, but there are pellets at the bottom of my jar now, and...wait...the bloody mantis is waving at me right NOW! Mocking me. Mocking be because he won't eat in front of me! Who ever heard of a polite mantis? What's that? Where's it come from?!
Fine. Chiquinha came and told me I was cruel not to have a stick in the jar for perching on. So the bugger has a twig. I think he's eating the twig. Pansy mantis. He's a vegitarian.

So maybe the mantis doesn't consider two hosueflies to be a meal. Maybe since January he's resolved not to snack at all unless he's at a proper meal. Maybe anything.

So I'm milking again yesterday and I see a meaty grasshopper on one of the rounds of hay. Again, I scoop him and bag him, and poscast my way through the milking. At home, I'm giddy to drop the grasshopper into the jar. This time I'll get some real kung fu, right? Wrong! The mantis takes two swipes the grasshopper and leaves him alone. A freakin pacifist! I go to lunch, come back, and what do I see? Grasshopper has mantis in a death grip! Now there's excitement, right? Wrong. The grip lasted all of this many seconds. Now they don't touch each other.

I never meant to have a pet grasshopper.

Maybe neither of them is hungry. But for the mantis, it's been like 4 days! Eat, Anansi, eat!