Thousands of Mantises...

While we were still living in base housing at Wright Patterson AFB in the early-mid 1950’s, I remember one of my brothers showing us a twig he had broken off the limb of a tree. This must have been Karl – because it seems Johnny would have still been a little baby….but I’m not sure. On the twig was a huge cocoon. It was soft and furry and one of the biggest cocoon’s even Mom or Dad had ever seen. We all were sure it was going to be a lovely butterfly when it hatched.

Mother gave him a mason jar with a lid for his cocoon and he nestled it among leaves and bits of grass down inside the jar. He poked holes in the top of the lid and waited day after day for his butterfly to hatch.

When we sat around the living room floor watching TV, I remember laying as close as I could to the jar so I could watch and hopefully be the first one to see signs of life wriggling out of the fluffy layers. He would often take the lid off the jar and let us take turns holding the twig – letting us take turns inspecting every inch of the specimen as closely as we could.

I don’t remember if it was a morning or a nap-time afternoon – but I know everyone in the family responded to frantic scream coming from the boys’ bedroom. We ran up the stairs and around the hallway into the boys’ room. Mother burst in first to see thousands and thousands of the tiniest little creatures crawling, hovering and jumping around the room. They were green and looked kind of like grasshoppers but they certainly were NOT butterflies – they were praying mantis! (Nature Fact Sheet: Each praying mantis egg case will hatch about 100-200 tiny mantises, all at once – but my little girl memory envisions there being ‘thousands and thousands’!)

My brother was screaming at the top of his lungs because he was up on the top bunk (must have been Karl), with his body covered with the little creatures. They were all over his head, his pillow, his covers, his arms, his bed frame – completely surrounding him and crawling around.

Mother calmed him down immediately by walking slowly over to his bedroom window and opening it as high as it would go. She turned back to him and told him how wonderful it was that he had kept the lid off the jar while he slept so his little friends could find their freedom as soon as they came out of their cocoon rather than be trapped in the jar and possibly have died.

I remember my brother starting to laugh as Mother let the little praying mantis babies crawl on her arms and hands. He was no longer frightened and neither was I. I also remember running to the window to help Mother shoo the little ones on their way. This is one of my most treasured memories of the Dayton, Ohio days.