Don't read this before dinner ... or bedtime!!

Three weeks in Africa, and already we’ve had some adventures with creepy-crawlies.  I suppose no stint in Africa, regardless of its length, would be complete without them.  Monster centipedes are now old news, and this past week we inadvertently left the bedroom windows open too long past dark and had to kill about 50 big vicious-looking insects flying around the room before we could even think about going to sleep.  But the other night I had a front-row seat to a fascinating and disturbing experience, like the nature channel only less than a foot from my face rather than on a screen. [No, not the amorous kind of nature channel experience … the other kind.]

It gets dark around 7pm here this time of year, so I was doing dishes well after dark.  The wall above the kitchen has a window that faces east, and this window runs the entire width of the room.  An assortment of moths and other bugs congregate on this window after dark, being drawn to it by the light, of course.  It’s all rather ho-hum.  But this particular night I saw a large mantis, about 2” long, sitting on the window at about head height.  It was cool because I’ve never really seen the underbelly of a mantis before.  It was really cool, and I was particularly excited at the possibility of witnessing first hand a little bit of insect cannibalism [it’s twistedly morbid, I know – perhaps there is therapist here who can help].  Actually, I was so excited by this possibility that I was having a hard time getting the dishes done.  But alas, nothing was happening.  The mantis looked more like it was sleeping than hunting.

I was about ready to give up in disappointment, and was, in fact, dutifully turning back to the dishes when a small moth (about ½” long) swooped down into the “danger zone.”  The mantis grabbed the moth in its front legs, and the motion was slow enough that I could actually see it happening.  [This surprised me, I expected that it would be so lightning fast that I wouldn’t be able to really watch it.]  However, the next bit was fairly horrible.

With the moth clamped in its forelegs, the mantis ripped the moth in half, roughly lengthwise – mercifully, because I think the moth died instantly.  So the mantis has a half-moth in each foreleg, and then starts half-eating, half-sucking the flesh out.  Now I don’t know exactly what a mantis mouth looks like, but from my vantage point it appeared like the mantis had four mandibles – top, bottom, right, and left – which made its devouring of this moth appear especially gruesome, almost gluttonous.  The mantis started with the half-moth in its left leg then moved on to the right.  Within three minutes, there was nothing left except two paperish wings, one of which was still stuck to the mantis’ thorax like crumbs clinging to a napkin or something.

It was both awful and awesome at the same time.  Ah, Africa!