In search of a praying mantis...

Detective Doozey and I started out this morning heading to a sort of forested area near our house to search for the alusive mantis in south Florida. Well...um...I was driving on the road where I thought this county area was located...and...well...never found it. LOL. What road did I see this place on??? I've only been there like 5 times already. In my and Detective Doozeys defense, my husband has just told me that it is easy to miss, and is not marked very well. Ahhh...now I feel so much relief that I will not need a CAT scan of my brain...I mean it was I, not the other detective, who was driving...and she is really bad at navigational skills!

We decided to visit a dog park instead, where absolutely NO mantis hunting was done...only frivolous play, running, and jumping!

After we got back home, I let the doggy detective go in the house for some water and relaxation, while my trusted camera and I went around the yard searching in all the bushes...quietly at first, then rather aggresively...and HERE IS WHAT I FOUND:

In the underside of this wheelbarrow I saw a bunch of squirming little things. On closer inspection I believe they are tadpoles. They were only in the water in this middle section. I decided it would be fun to take some of this water and little sqirmies in a jar to my kitchen window to observe. I put some of the dead vegetation in the water also, to make it a perfect habitat for the little guys.



In the bottom of the jar...about dead center, in the bottom pic you can see a sort of straight little line...that is one of the squirmies!!! I will cover the top of the jar with a bit of nylon stocking so I will not come home one day to frogs jumping around in my kitchen!

I found some tendrils:



Some grape-like bunches hanging on my fence!

I found spores on the underside of my fern leaves! I have always had a fascination with fern spores! OMG...am I giving you too much weird information about myself???

Some really beautiful dead frilly plant material!

Several ladybugs,

And a wasp or two.

A needle-like dragonfly! Click on pic to see better.

And of course, some flowers.

But in and amongst the flowers...

I never did find even one Mantid. Now I am off to do some research on what happened to the populations of Mantis life that used to exist here...(I know, cause I once found a brown "Walking Stick" in my very own backyard as a child). Since then, I have never seen one. Oh...on a side note...I asked my neighbor (who is in his 40's) and who is a horticulture guy if he ever sees any in his sprinkler business...and he said, "Oh, the last time I saw one of those was in a cartoon when I was a kid"! He grew up here too. Hmmmmmmm.....
EVER ONWARD!