Doing battle

This is a true story. It happened to me the other night after my quilt guild meeting. I'd stopped to get some gas (it's cheaper out by where my guild meets) and as I stood at an incredibly slow pump waiting to pay my jillion dollars for a tank of fuel, out of the corner of my eye I saw something scoot past my feet. My first thought was "mouse" 'cause it was about that size and it was kinda scuttling.

Now, I'm not a squeamish female when it comes to snakes or toads or mice or spiders or insects (well....maybe spiders.....OK, I'll admit to heebie jeebies over spiders), so since I wasn't doing anything more thrilling than watch my life savings tick away into the gas tank, I turned around figuring I'd go see what it was that just ran past my toes. As I was turning, I saw something run up around over the top of the rear right tire and perch on the tire under the wheel well. You guessed it, a praying mantis. And this was no ordinary praying mantis--this was the former-Soviet-Union-bulked-up-on-performance-enhancing-insect-steroids-and-nearly-6-inches-long mantis variety!

I have always thought these insects were amazing--but I have never in my life thought they could ever get this big!! It was astonishing! So I'm looking at this insect sitting on top of the tire and it is looking back at me doing kind of a feint and jab boxing thing at me with it's large front legs, and I'm thinking to myself "OK, this is a very cool insect and I can't leave it on my tire to get flattened, so I need to help this marvel of nature get over to some grass away from the gas pumps so it can pass on its genes to future generations of praying mantis." (Seriously, I'm a total nerd, this is ACTUALLY what I was thinking!!)

Being the non-squeamish type, I reached in with my bare hand and tried to shoo this bright green beauty off my tire. (Did I mention my hand was bare?) This former Russian-type mantis instantly converted to Spider Mantis and leaped up to the underside of the wheel well and was hanging there upside down growling at me! "Dadgum you stupid bug....come on, off my tire with you!" and I tried to make my hand into kind of a basket and gently grasp the mantis to lift it out of the tire well. BIG mistake! This bleeping insect grabbed on to my hand with all six of its muscular, hairy legs and then bit the living sh*t out of my finger!! Needless to say this caused me to yell quite loudly and leap away from both the van and the gas pump and do kind of a native American style get-the-hell-away-from-the-giant-biting-bug dance.

The guy in the Quickie Mart portion of the gas station must have thought I was having a seizure due to the outrageous charge for gas piling up on the pump. The bug flew out of the tire well, straight at me, and then veered right, flew behind my mini van, and then looped right back around and came at me for a frontal assault! With me hopping around flapping my arms and cursing loudly, the mantis apparently decided it might be best to just land back on the van and head for the tire again.

"Oh no you don't, not on my watch you're not getting back on my van." But having just lost a small but tasty niblet off my finger, I was not about to go at this creature bare handed again! I backed around the van and made a bee line for the blue paper towels the gas station courteously offers to assist drivers in cleaning spattered bugs off of their car windows (he he he, a little poetic justice was in the making!) The plan was to capture the mantis by wrapping it safely but securely in the paper towel and then run like mad to the grassy knoll just behind the pumps and set the little b*st*rd free. I circled back around the van (by now the Quickie Mart guy knows this isn't a seizure) and approached with caution. Every time I tried to get close enough to grab the beastie, it would raise up its front legs and punch at me! "Rotten, ungrateful bug! I am trying to save your ass! Now get off of my van!"

The creature flew up again, over the top of my head, and then decided its best defense was to go in low, so it flew down to the ground and charged me!!!! Seriously, based on the amount of squealing I was doing at this point, I am shocked the Quickie Mart guy wasn't calling in the locals. I dropped the paper towel (I'd like to say it was a calculated move, but it wasn't--it was pure jelly knees, shaking hands bumbling) and the paper towel landed right on top of the mantis! Once the mantis was covered, it did what any mantis would probably do: it levitated off the ground, straight up, with the paper towel on top of it and started flying around like a little blue ghost!

Eventually the paper towel fell off and the mantis flew off into the night. Thank heavens I was paying at the pump and didn't have to explain myself to the Quickie Mart guy! So I climbed into my mantis-free van and drove home, scrubbing my poor bitten finger with a baby wipe lest I contract some dreaded mantis-borne disease. That's my story. Maybe Spielberg could do something with this.