The Mantis Diaries, Part 1--Styx

Styx: The First

In the days of old, Best Beloved, the deserts of Araknicandor were flooded with fauna of every factor--the Ladybird and the Lioness and the Bees and Bats and Birds and the liberally long-legged Striders who walked upon the waters of the Great Oasis. The most powerful of these was the Eldest Mantis, who had for his apprentice the ladybird Belandus.

The segment quoted above is from my story, How the Ladybird got his Spots, written some time ago. I had several inspirations for it, including the work of Rudyard Kipling. But who was the original Eldest Mantis? Perhaps I had better take you back to the beginning.

I had been reading about mantises before we obtained our first one (August 2005), and I thought that they sounded like interesting creatures. Sadly, they are few and far between, and at the most we find about three every summer. I was beginning to give up hope of ever finding one when, one sunny evening in August, I heard shouting from the front yard. It seems Marie had found a mantis.

Styx, as we later named him, quickly became a member of the Gunther family. (Marie had originally called him Sticks, because he looked like a stick, but my mother asked us if we had named him after the River Styx from Greek mythology, and we adopted the spelling.) He was still young (in human years, a teenager) and had no wings. We found out many interesting things about him.

He ate bits of taco meat (sour cream and all) and drank water out of plates. At first we tricked him into thinking that the taco meat was alive by waving it in front of him with a tweezers, but he soon discovered that taco meat was food. Once he leaned over and ate his meat like a dog without even picking it up! Once, when he was thirsty, he attempted to drink the frost off my mother's root beer bottle, spreading his claws out so that they wouldn't get in the way of his face and sucking the icy droplets from the surface.

He was tame but bloodthirsty. One day he pounced on a huge cave cricket and pinned it to the ground for a minute. Unsure of where to start, he suddenly made a grab at one of its back legs. Pulling it off, he held it in one claw and ate it like a drumstick, all the while holding the rest of the struggling insect down with his other claw so that it wouldn't get away!

Even larger animals were not safe from him, for one day we foolishly left him in the same cage as Camouflage, Theresa's pet toad. The cage had a small shelter in it shaped like an anthill, built for insects. When we came back we found the toad cowering inside the shelter, with Styx waiting outside for him to leave! Theresa claims to have seen Styx snap at Camouflage. I believe every word of it.

He could turn his head to look at you (making a loud and sudden noise was the best way to get his attention) and had small, sharp spines on his claws to help him grip his prey. Attached to his claws were tiny "stilts" that folded out. When he wasn't hunting, he lowered them down, turning his claws into legs.

We often took him outdoors and down the basement to hunt. He was just as much at home indoors as he was outdoors. He seemed almost human. He was everything that you could ever want in a pet mantis.

Even when he was dying, he managed to consume a considerable portion of the pork we gave him. The whole family was sad when he died, including my parents. We have had many mantises, but Styx was the first, the one that started it all. Little did we know how soon it was that we would find, not one, but two more mantises...

Tomorrow, I will write a post on Beech Tree and Renarda, the mothers. I am planning for this to be a series.
--Agnes, age 12

Comments

[jennifer in austin]

Agnes, We read your Mantis Diary this morning and we enjoyed it. We can hardly wait for Part II.
~Ian(9yo) and Louisa(6yo)

[Agnes]

Thanks! :-) I will write it soon.
Agnes

[Michael]

Oh, my goodness!!! I just read your other post about the babeis hatching. This is just AMAZING!! I am blown away that you actually caught her laying the sac!!! I would be doing backflips if I witnessed this and/or the babeis hatching. Thank you so much for sharing this amazing wonder of God's creation!!!! I find egg sacs every year in my garden but have never had the privilege of witnessing either laying or hatching.