{"id":1250,"date":"2005-09-17T09:36:33","date_gmt":"2005-09-17T14:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2005\/09\/17\/20050917-mantids\/"},"modified":"2022-03-11T13:06:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T19:06:38","slug":"20050917-mantids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/09\/17\/20050917-mantids\/","title":{"rendered":"Creature Faceoff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right; padding: 1em 0 1em 24px;\" title=\"Photo - real praying mantis stares down fake one\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/images\/fireant\/mantis1.jpg\">I suppose I have a thing for <a title=\"Earlier Gazette post\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2004\/10\/14\/sci-fi-creature-on-the-loose\/\">mantids<\/a>. In my defense, they&#8217;re the T-Rexes of the insect world, only greener. How can you not be fascinated by them? Plus, they&#8217;re quite photogenic.<\/p>\n<p>Late yesterday afternoon, I spied a praying mantis resting on a plastic stool on the patio. As I turned to go back inside, I caught a glance of something else and realized photos must be taken.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The really interesting thing is that two hours later, the live mantis was still staring down his much larger but no more stoic rival. At some point, I guess I need to remove the fake insect so the other one can get on with his life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unless&#8230;and this is a vaguely disturbing thought&#8230;there&#8217;s some more basic, um, attraction at work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Photo - real praying mantis stares down fake one\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/images\/fireant\/mantis2.jpg\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I suppose I have a thing for mantids. In my defense, they&#8217;re the T-Rexes of the insect world, only greener. How can you not be fascinated by them? Plus, they&#8217;re quite photogenic. Late yesterday afternoon, I spied a praying mantis resting on a plastic stool on the patio. As I turned to go back inside,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/09\/17\/20050917-mantids\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Creature Faceoff<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-wildlife-inverts","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8553,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions\/8553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}