In all the years of owning the Ranch and traipsing around, this is the very first Preying Mantis that we have seen. This one is a gravid (pregnant with eggs) female, as you can see by the enlarged abdomen. She will lay an egg sac of foamy material that will harden into an egg case and protect the young. They will hatch in the spring and become voracious predators.

 

Note the large mobile head and the large compound eyes. The better to see you with, my dear! They are harmless to handle and quite fascinating. Thank you, Eric. She was let go into the Harding grass across the road from the swings.

 

We wondered why it was not green, but a pale yellow. Note how easily the mantis blends into the grass. If she was not on the log, she would be invisible.

Three tarantualas were seen during the first two days. This picture was taken by Allen:

Guy and David went out to test fire Guy's gun. He has a new 12x scope on it, had sighted it in once, wanted to do it again.

Guy at the shooting bench, Winchester .270

The shots are labelled in the order of occurance. The group of 3 (not a bad group!) we felt were a bit to the right, so four clicks brought the 4th shot. We then tweaked it two more clicks to the left and got the 5th shot. We left it alone after that!

Guy, Craig, and David did not go on the Wild Goose-Pig Hunt, but stayed in camp and did something useful: cut up the fallen branch.

We soon had it cut up, with Craig running the large saw, Guy running the small saw, and David playing Brush Monkey (hauling the smaller branches out of the way) and stacking the firewood. The small saw was running badly, and later Guy corrected the problem: the air intake below the air filter was jammed with sawdust and oil. It ran great later.