proper mantis etiquette

My weekend of painting the brother in law's place wasn't so bad. I had loaded the Bad Plus' These are the Vistas and Give into the old MP3 player, as instrumental music tends to ward off the negative effects of the dreaded Manuel Labor, and otherwise listened to the oldies station when working in the same room with Mrs. Camino. It is cute when she sings along. It is even cuter when Cat Stevens comes on and I call him Osama Bin Peacetrain, though the wife will disagree.

My only other companion was this mantis who occupied the "not a step" step on the other side of the ladder. It was female, we assume. We found the headless corpse of a male underneath the ladder itself and deducted that Zorak--as she was christened when we thought her to be a him--was actually a recently impregnated mantisette. Yes, I know that isn't a word.

Though she was only an inch long, see if this sequence does not give you the chills.

A female mantis is really only harmful is you make love to it, and I was careful to avoid that. I did not even flirt with her or offer her a drink. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

The other remakable thing about the weekend was the heat. The house has no electricity or air conditioning yet, and the only solace is to open every window and pray for a breeze. The only problem with that is that the house is surrounded by cow pastures. All breezes coming into the house bring the smell of cattle and cattle fields with it. I hadn't been exposed to that much bullshit since I spent that semester as a journalism major.