My mantids are finally reaching maturity and I only have suitable long-term accommodations for one, so it’s time to get the others out of the house (and with the addition of the kitten I have too many irons in the fire anyway).

I was originally going to raise these to full size and then put them out among the dahlias, but my beetle problem has reached the point where I’ll be going to commercial-grade pesticides that would kill the mantids just as quickly as everything else. So now I’m trying to find other suitable locations.

Here goes mantis #2 into some plants by the garage:

l7 mantis canister
l7 mantis climbing out of canister
l7 mantis released

I’ve had a wild one hanging out around the patio for the past few days. Despite seeding the yard with hundreds of hatchlings earlier this year, this is the only one I’ve seen in months, so I’m guessing not many survived. It’s probably an L5 or L6, and definitely not as big and far along as my well-fed ones:

wild mantis eating moth on patio door

Mantis #3 went into the rose bushes out back:

l7 mantis in container
l7 mantis on stick
l7 mantis released

About week later mantis #5 went into some decorative grass along the front yard:

l7 mantis in container
l7 mantis climbing out
l7 mantis released

That just leaves mantis #4, which should be molting soon except I can’t seem to find it…

Oh.

l7 mantis remains

The culprits;

feeders from container

The little black beetles are dermestids that are supposed to clean up some of the mess from the other insects. They’re the same type used in taxidermy and scientific applications to clean bones. I didn’t even think there were any left until I was poking around in the container and they started to crawl up out of the gravel.

In any case it’s not entirely a surprise that #4 didn’t survive. This particular one was always really clumsy and falling down into its container, and then two of its legs got injured after the last molt when it tried to climb through the gap right as I started screwing on the lid. It was still able to perch and hunt and I was hoping the legs would straighten out again during the final molt (something that is apparently possible). I’m guessing it either molted and fell while really vulnerable, or maybe the most recent batch of crickets were simply too big and hungry for it to handle.

I dumped the fat crickets into the cage with big #1, so that’ll be the end of them.

l7 mantis