Praying Mantis pics

[Portmac]

A couple of quick shots I took of a praying mantis that came visiting my outdoor table just before Christmas.
Taken with canon 400d 18-55mm lens @ 55mm.

[stephenmcnelley]

Nice critter portmac, they are truly fascinating to observe.:thumbsup:

Below is a pic of a spider that visited my bathroom lastnight, she was quite docile. I let her be and maybe there are a few less cockroaches or geckos in the house today:D

The flash image has a toothbrush to the RHS for a rough guide to scale.

[Portmac]

Man that spider is HUGE!

It's lucky it was not in/near my house as I really hate spiders.

[earthlight]

:jawdrop:OH my god!!! you let it STAY in the house???

That's huge, it could make you very sick if you get a bite. I even get rid of the normal house spiders that live in the windows when I see them after I read they can kill young children and transmit that flesh killing bacteria. Granted I don't check often, once a year is good. Ones of that size are caught and released outside in our house.

We did have a funny experience with a friend. Now she is petrified of spiders!!!! One night she rang on her mobile saying she was traped in her house as a big spider was above the door.

Now we thought yeh big to her was, maybe, palm size including legs. Average night time visitor around here. So up we went with our usual catcher, an old headphone package with slide in back, to release her.

Low and behold this thing was HUGE!! :scared2: I have never to this day see one so big. It was bigger than Tony's max handspan, mine is 20cm, his is at least 5 cm wider. This was with the spider relaxed too. Wow, we had walked under it.

Of course we had to keep cool for her :whistle: She was freaked!! :scared:We had to search the house to find something big enough. :confuse3:After about 10 min we found an empty pot (10inches) and some card to catch it. Then we organised an altnative option if it ran, and it looked like it could run FAST. Our friend didn't like the idea of moving fast at all, I think I remember her squeeling a bit about that.

Thankfully it didn't move and we caught it. Then we were confrunted with the idea of what to do with it, and who was going to let it go and where. Our friend suggested one direction, saying 'I don't like those neighbours' unfortunatly we were on the other side them. So we released it on the other side near a big tree. Tony said it had already made a bit of a web inside the pot but thankfully swung out cleanly. Now I do realise 10 m is nothing for a spider but it was the thought of it being further away was good.

Unfortunatly now I wish we had take it to the museum, they don't have a huntsman specimine that big. I didn't even think of a photo. Afterwood our friend said she thought of the video camera but it was under it so she didn't mention it.

I hope I never see that one in my house. I don't think I could catch it alone. Or even stand the idea it could get in. When we renovated the frount of our house, I had to spend a night with a 2.5m x 7m gap in the floor. I can tell you I didn't sleep well that night.

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earthlight

[petal666]

omg, people let you use the internet? Change your font size.

[ving]

lol at petal 666...

yes plz change the font size, at least for some of it :)

[earthlight]

Sorry I've never had that happen before.
It looked ok on my computer, just like everyone elses.
Even now I've changed it, it looks the same???? :shrug:
I always preview the post and never change the font size, I've never needed to.

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earthlight

[astroron]

Think before you use your typing finger, Rudeness is not necessary.
As has been pointed out there is a problem that was not noticed by the sender,not everybody is an idiot:)