OT: Praying Mantis Season! (with pics)

[odinn7]

ulthar Wrote:
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  I usually help spiders outside (I
> know it is not a popular view, but I LIKE spiders)
> if they are larger; the smaller ones just stay in
> the house.
>


Good man, good man! I applaud you. Too many people are quick to kill spiders and for no reason really. Spiders are very helpful and amazing creatures. As many here know, I have 4 tarantulas and am big on trying to get people to at least accept spiders and not just kill them for no reason.

[Scott]

What about dangerous squirrels Odinn7?

[Scott]

When I was about 14 years old and lived in the countryside of North Central Pennsylvania for a little while I caught a praying mantis and an insect called a walking stick and put them in the same container together. By the next morning they were both dead with the walking stick cut in half. No kidding.

[ulthar]

ROFL!!

Cool pic, Scott.  Did you create it?

[Neville]

Impressive pictures, Ash. That's the kind of stuff I'll never, ever, ever, do. I have a phobia against big insects, and hearing one moving in the same room is enough to leave me paralised.

[Scott]

No.......it's a real insect Ulthar. It looks just like a stick and walks about. Here is a walking stick link below for more info. : )

Walking Stick

[loyal1]

lol...if you are kidding you have a great sense of humor...if not, sorry. :(

[LH-C]

There used to be this real jerk off radio talk show host named Spencer Hughes here where I live, and he was deathly afraid of Praying Mantises. He was a p***y.

[odinn7]

Scott Wrote:
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> What about dangerous squirrels Odinn7?
>
> http://hometown.aol.com/thebestplaces/images/squir
> rels%20with%20guns%202.jpg


KILL THE SQUIRRELS!!!!!!!!

[Scott]

[loyal1]

Now that is a great pic.  I remember the first time I saw a flying squirrel...I near wet myself laughing.  I don't know what it is about squirrels but I enjoy them immensely.

[Neville]

Never seen any real life squirrels, they must be rare in my country. And I doubt we ever had the flying variety. I'm quite ambivalent towards that pic. One part of me wants to pet it, the other thinks it resembles a bat too much.

[ulthar]

I like bats.  I think they are very cool, and they eat nuisance bugs.  I've been thinking about building some bat boxes for my back yard to encourage them to hang out.

[loyal1]

I think bats are pretty cool too...although I dropped to the floor when I found one flying by my head in the house.  It was when I first found badmovies.org and was reading the posts in the living room of my grandmothers house on my lap top.  That thing scared me half to death.  My grandfather got it outside though.

Another great memory is my time in NH with my sisters, brothers and cousins at my grandmothers house.  Across the street was a huge field with fireflies everywhere.  Cool sight, then around dusk the bats would come out, and my cousin Shane had dreads...it was caught in his hair for a few moments and he ran and screamed through the fields and we just laughed and laughed.  Usually the never came down that low.

[peter johnson]

If you do build a bat box, make sure it's high on the side of your house -- like all the way up to the top of the eve, as high as you can get it -- or put it on a tall pole.  The bats won't come if they think it's not high enough off the ground.
Also, be sure there's a water source nearby -- this ain't a big deal out East, where there's water water everywhere, but out here in Colorado -- mostly desert -- it's a huge consideration.  Bats really like a pond or a lake or a stream nearby because they flit down to the surface to grab a drink.
Bats are a scream -- They get very snippy with one another if they think someone's crowding the entrance/exit to the bat-box.  Usually subsonic vocally, they get quite AUDIBLE when swearing at each other in 'batsprache".
One of the coolest things I remember about my time in India was walking around the neighborhoods in Pune -- These were very proper neighborhoods made up of old British manor-style Victorian homes from the Raj period, so very much like a classic old 1910/1930's neighborhood in any rich district in any city in the USA, . . . except . . . around dusk, these things that looked like coconuts would start dropping from the trees, and  . . .  just before they hit the ground . . . would POP open like a party favour, and woosh!   These wings would appear, and slowly off would fly the Fruit Bats, with 4ft. wingspans!!  Wotta sight!
Batty Batty Batty!!
peter johnson/denny crane