Years ago, the kids of a friend of mine put one of those in a kitchen cabinet drawer
He got up the next morning and there were hundreds of baby mantis all over the kitchen
That's what I've done when I find them. There good for the garden.
Praying Mantises kill Hummingbirds.
Used to buy praying mantis cocoons from Burpee Seeds for the garden.
We used to bring those inside all the time as kids. We had a couple bay windows with indoor plants. It was so cool watching them hatch and then eat each other.
The first day they hatch, there are hundreds of tiny ones less than a quarter inch long. The next day there are maybe ten or twenty, about a half inch long.
The third or fourth day, only one or two big ones.
If you haven’t ever done this, you are depriving yourself and your children of an amazing lesson from nature.
To paraphrase the late John Candy:
“Those Aren’t Pine Cones!!!”
Used to work at Midway airport near Chicago. Southwest flights from Texas would routinely carry many stowaway praying mantis, and they were gigantic.
They kill black widow spiders.
Gardening ping
preying mantis eggs... thousands of them will hatch. they are federally protected. do not kill them... they will eat every other bug in your house. in spring, leave the windows open and they will leave.
my dad, an arborist for the city of baltimore, trimmed some thorny bushes and found some sacks among the clippings. He forgot them in his truck and the sun warmed them and they hatched in the winter... thousands of babies in his truck... it was like a miniature jurassic park.
Organizations will pay good money for those things. I know a fellow who goes into fields of trees that were clear cut a couple of years ago. He collects all of them and sends someplace in the far West for cash.
The same advice applies to neighbors you may be thinking of inviting over.