Success!

Last autumn, while I was cleaning up some dead leaves in the garden, I found an unattached praying mantis egg case (ootheca) lying in the dirt. I moved it to a safe place and 9 weeks ago I attached it to a dead bronze fennel flower stem with waterproof sticky tape. It looked knackered to me, but I thought it was worth a go. And it was! Today it hatched. There are several tassels, left by the emerging nymphs. I managed to find two of them, but the fennel leaves made it very difficult.

I’m especially pleased about this since the wee nymph that found its way into the greenhouse and took up residence on the Stevia plant, has disappeared and been replaced by a lynx spider big enough to capture the mantis.