
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993                   TAG: 9308220022
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MANTIS WAS PRAYING FOR SLOW DRIVER

A praying mantis on the windshield. Geezo, I didn't need this now, I needed to get to the Food Lion - and there was a praying mantis, swaying on hair-thin legs, near the wiper on my windshield.

It is of course illegal to kill a praying mantis. Kill a praying mantis and a P.M.P.D. (Praying Mantis Police Department) cop grabs you, throws you against your car, handcuffs then beats you.

Flash bulbs pop and television cameras roll as federal marshals drag you from the back seat of an unmarked car and hurry you to the penitentiary's back door.

"MANTIS KILLER!!" shrieks the mob, thirsty for revenge.

I did need to get to Food Lion, though, and I waved at the mantis on the windshield to get it off. It reared on hinds legs like some prehistoric insect bull, snorted at me.

Law be damned, figured I. Suit yourself.

I tried to blot from view that corner of the windshield where the mantis clung. I could not watch it die.

Eric Day says praying mantises are generally tree dwellers. They have spikes and spines on their legs to hang on to bark and stems. Day is a Virginia Tech entomologist. He knows mantis legs.

I drove as slowly as I could, but it can't be easy to hang on to a slick windshield when you've only got six pinpoint-sized feet.

The game little mantis persevered at 25 mph, then 30 mph. I winced as I goosed the car up to 35 mph. This would be first-degree mantis slaying. I knew well the risk inherent in prodding that accelerator.

There are arolium on those mantis feet; super-sticky pads for those few times in a mantis's life when hanging on to a windshield might become a necessity.

I eased onto the dreaded Electric Road, where 35 mph is reserved for mowing tractors and pedestrians. At great personal risk, I accelerated only to 45 mph - a speed at which I could easily have been killed by traffic that routinely moves twice as fast.

Antennae swept back by the wind, crouched low to the windshield, the mantis hung on.

Your young mantis will eat aphids, beetles and caterpillars, a true gardeners' pal. As it grows, it'll eat bees and butterflies and pretty much anything else with meat on it. Frogs, shrews, even small birds are documented snacks.

I made it to Food Lion. The mantis waited outside.

The mantis looks like it's praying. Wrote French entomologist Henri Fabre of the carnivore, "Those sanctimonious airs are a mask for Satanic habits."

Added Eric Day, "You know, their closest relatives are cockroaches."

The female eats the male after mating - some male mantises can't even START mating until their heads are chewed off!

I dashed out of the store, prepared to smash the bloodthirsty little tyrannosaurus mantis and then to flee the P.M.P.D.

It was gone. It had endured 45 mph on the windshield and then walked away from a parked car, unleashed in the wilds of Salem to chew its way through everything animal - dogs, horses, cabbages, even itself!

I should have killed it when I had the chance. I should have pushed it to 50 mph.

by CNB