Garden Visitors–Praying Mantis or Alien?

No, not an alien, although praying mantis do really look like how some extra terrestrial's are illustrated.  Look at the triangle shaped head, big eyes and jointed hands or front legs.  As you can see from this photo he/she is looking directly at the camera.  When the camera beeped to say it was focused the bug swiveled it’s head in that direction.I  found this large one while watering my flowers one day.  It was about 4” long so startled me when it ran out of the flowers and up onto the deck right beside the flowers.  I had seen smaller ones earlier this summer but this is the largest I had ever seen.  Since then I have seen several others that were this large so we are not sure where they have come from or why we see them now.One of our curious kittens walked over on the deck while the praying mantis was still on the deck.  Hank, the kitten, was looking at me and coming over to be petted and didn’t even see this huge bug and the praying mantis was not looking at the cat either.  I still had my camera in my hands so snapped a shot of the two of them.  If Hank had taken one more step he would have stepped right on the praying mantis Thanks for checking back on me and reading to the bottom of this blog post since I have not blogged for such a long time.  I just have not been motivated I guess, plus the longer I went without blogging the harder it was to sit down and write.  I am a great procrastinator I guess.  Tonight, hopefully will be the start of more frequent blogging so please come back tomorrow.

As always – until later,
Lynn