Nature in Action!
Yesterday afternoon I went out to my CSA farm to pick up my weekly share. My co-worker was at the farm doing some volunteer weeding in the flower garden and I stopped to chat. I noticed a small motion in the branches of a nearby shrub and when I looked more closely I saw that a very large praying mantis and captured a very large grasshopper and was in the process of DEVOURING IT ALIVE.
It was astoundingly awesome. I watched the mantis chew on that grasshopper for 15 minutes. It ate off two of its legs and then worked its jaws over the hopper's carapace, trying to find a weak spot where it could bore into the juicy goodness inside. Finally it decided the best way in was through the hopper's eye socket, so it ate the grasshopper's eye and continued onward, excavating a hole in the bug's head. Throughout this torture the grasshopper was squirming and thrashing but the mantis had a death grip on its back and head. The hopper could only flail helplessly at the air with its one free back leg. It was doomed. The mantis's jaws looked like a cluster of whirling knives, a chaos of mandibles chopping and gnawing and cutting. I could hear the grasshopper's exoskeleton snapping as the mantis broke off pieces of it a tiny bit at a time. I realized that it was going to be a long time before the mantis was finished with its meal so I instructed my co-worker to keep an eye on the pair and report back to me at work as the the final fate of the grasshopper. I learned that the grasshopper finally succumbed (having your brain eaten will do that, I guess) and the mantis continued to munch away, eventually turning the hopper over to get at the legs on the other side.
It was disgusting, fascinating, horrifying, awesome, and all-around educational.
It was astoundingly awesome. I watched the mantis chew on that grasshopper for 15 minutes. It ate off two of its legs and then worked its jaws over the hopper's carapace, trying to find a weak spot where it could bore into the juicy goodness inside. Finally it decided the best way in was through the hopper's eye socket, so it ate the grasshopper's eye and continued onward, excavating a hole in the bug's head. Throughout this torture the grasshopper was squirming and thrashing but the mantis had a death grip on its back and head. The hopper could only flail helplessly at the air with its one free back leg. It was doomed. The mantis's jaws looked like a cluster of whirling knives, a chaos of mandibles chopping and gnawing and cutting. I could hear the grasshopper's exoskeleton snapping as the mantis broke off pieces of it a tiny bit at a time. I realized that it was going to be a long time before the mantis was finished with its meal so I instructed my co-worker to keep an eye on the pair and report back to me at work as the the final fate of the grasshopper. I learned that the grasshopper finally succumbed (having your brain eaten will do that, I guess) and the mantis continued to munch away, eventually turning the hopper over to get at the legs on the other side.
It was disgusting, fascinating, horrifying, awesome, and all-around educational.