New Pet: Pizza the Orchid Praying Mantis

So I tried to hatch a praying mantis egg last summer, which I soon learned is called an ootheca. For some reason my video blew up overnight and it currently sits at 4.4 million views and over 700k likes. I really don’t understand- the video wasn’t even interesting?!

Anyways, hatching the egg was a total fail. They were Chinese praying mantis’ and each ootheca is supposed to hatch 50-200 bugs. My egg finally hatched after what seemed like weeks of waiting, and to much disappointment. Three, very meek baby praying mantis’ hatched, and subsequently died.

Fast forward to October and I decide I want a praying mantis, but not a Chinese preying mantis. Honestly, they’re a bit creepy and I’m glad that there are not a bunch of them hopping around the backyard. I had seen someone else on TikTok with an orchid praying mantis and so I decided I’d try to get one of those too because they’re smaller and not as creepy IMO.

I searched all over and they all seemed to be out of stock, but then I found the facebook page of US Mantis where the owner had posted about having oothecas for the orchid praying mantis. Craig the owner reached out and notified me that they were ready and once I placed my order it took a few weeks for them to be shipped. Because he is shipping a live animal he tries to time it just right to good weather (don’t want it to overheat or freeze) and when there likely won’t be shipping delays. He was great with communication and sent some praying mantis info via email before I received my shipment.

Anyways, I have had my orchid praying mantis for about a month now and so far so good! I take it out of its container every so often but it jumps around and is so small, that I’m afraid I’m going to lose it. I also just got a new set to make a new fruit fly culture, because the one that I bought to come with it is about to expire. I got my new fruit fly kit from Josh’s Frogs, and got the excelsior, media and some new containers. I am just going to put my old fruit flies into the new container with fresh excelsior and medium.