Lunchtime

I had a fairly successful morning working at the forge and using the flypress. When lunchtime came around I took a quick diversion down to the greenhouse dome to check on the sole surviving cucumber plant. For future reference I am interested to see how long it can survive. As I was leaving I noticed these two monsters on the doorframe. The mantis seemed to have the advantage in size and....

also as it turned out moments later, in strategy, she (judging by size and plumpness) was clearly waiting for some sustained movement to properly assess an attack from the side and she seized the opportunity when it came. I suspect this is just general practice, not specifically spider catching behaviour. I saw a similar sized mantis chewing on a large species of bee the other day and she also had the body grasped side on. The scene of the bee struggling despite half of its body having become subsumed by the mantis did actually make me feel a little queezy as I empathised a bit too much with the victim. In this case though I didn't stick around to witness the disappearance of the body, the first spurt of inards from the back of the abdomen of the spider was sufficient to let me know that this might be a PG entertainment I would not be able to erase from memory, so I headed off for my own lunch. The mantis did seem to relish the fluids that emerged and no doubt the nutritional burst will help her see it through to autumn and the ordeal of egg laying.