While we were having our garage sale I was making use of the time cleaning up the iris bed by the driveway. A huge grasshopper caught my eye, but on closer inspection I realized it was a praying mantis. Never having seen one in the wild before I was intrigued, especially as it was in the middle of devouring a spider. I pulled out my camera to take a picture, only to find my battery was dead. So I went to get one of my other cameras, but my SLRs were at the studio. That left my medium format film camera, but when I tried using it I found that the power button had gotten bumped into the on position during the move and so it also had a dead battery. Not a good showing for a professional photographer. So I plugged my Pentax’s battery into the charger and hoped that the mantis would still be there in a half hour. It was, and I got this photo, although by that time it had finished lunch.

Weird Update 9/12: My friend Greg emailed me a photograph that he took of a praying mantis that he spotted in his yard. I hadn’t even told him about the one in our yard, it was just a very weird coincidence.