{"id":2410,"date":"2011-10-31T20:20:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T01:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2012-04-03T16:01:27","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T21:01:27","slug":"video-an-out-of-town-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/video-an-out-of-town-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: The Mantis Drops In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is a praying mantis really <a href=\"http:\/\/rainydaythought.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/praying-mantis.html\" target=\"_blank\">good luck<\/a>? I&#8217;m not sure, but I do know that finding one in your backyard is a rare &#8211; or unheard of &#8211; event these semi-rural parts of south Santa Cruz county.  And it most definitely falls under the category of &#8220;way cool&#8221;. After our visitor arrived last weekend &#8211; and hopped onto both of us, I did a little research: The praying mantis is definitely not native. Its reach extends throughout the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Central_Valley_(California)\" target=\"_blank\">central valley<\/a> and then heads east into Nevada and New Mexico. We&#8217;re coastal, so it&#8217;s too cold. Cold or not, this little guy (or gal) was pretty active:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"243\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DxgWtcVBk98\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>So what brought it here? Maybe our neighboring organic orchard (no sprays, God bless &#8217;em!) dropped some on the trees as a natural pesticide. Could be that someone bought a batch of &#8217;em from the local hardware store (next to the bags of ladybugs) and a stray came our way. One friend also suggested that perhaps this mantis clung to our car on the way back from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/archives\/2292\" target=\"_blank\">American River Music Festival<\/a> last month. Not likely. That would have been one tough mantis, though some of these little buggers (pun intended) have been known to known to take down something <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ep6vmpcUQR8\" target=\"_blank\">as big as a hummingbird<\/a>. I *will* say that the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aphid\" target=\"_blank\">aphid <\/a>population around our house is null lately, Someone&#8217;s eating well. <\/p>\n<p>So is a praying mantis good luck? Maybe. Unless you&#8217;re an aphid. Or a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/critters\/wild\/mantis1.asp\" target=\"_blank\">*male*<\/a> praying mantis.<\/p>\n<p>Epilogue: If you&#8217;re wondering, of *course* I&#8217;m now working on bug songs. (And if you&#8217;re not spider phobic, ask me about my tarantula encounters in Gilroy the weekend before last.) <\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelgaither.com%2Fhome%2Fvideo-an-out-of-town-guest%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;&amp;width=800&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:800px;height:30px;margin-top:5px;\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is a praying mantis really good luck? I&#8217;m not sure, but I do know that finding one in your backyard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-critters","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3076,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/3076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}