Until you discover why he needs you in the kitchen before 7 a.m.
To set the scene:
You're 7 months pregnant. You've been fighting the seasonal allergy battle of your life (seriously, you're considering getting stock in pantyliners and tissues, you've been sneezing so hard and so often). You stayed up late watching Green Hornet with your spouse, and even later reading the sci-fi classic, Ender's Game, hoping that at some point you would just pass out so hard you wouldn't be woke up by burning eyes and a runny nose. At some point you say 'Screw it,' and go take some low dose, pregnancy safe allergy medication to try and get a little relief. As you get settled back into bed with your Nook you consider going downstairs to check on the organic garden pest control you bought earlier that day.
But, 'No,' your sleepy, allergy overloaded self says. 'The instructions said 2-6 weeks. Nothing's going to happen tonight.' Finally, around the dark hour of 2 a.m., the drugs have done enough work for you that you can take the tissues out of your nose and sleep without fearing a snot coating on your pillow.
Back to 7 a.m., your spouse leads you into the kitchen, saying, 'Your mantis pods hatched last night.'
Excitement! "Really?! Cool!"
'And they're all over the kitchen.'
"Shit."
In your defense, the box said that if you wanted to see them hatching, you should put them in a giant bowl. In your defense, you thought the mesh splatter shield weighted down with a ceramic plate would keep any that *might* be able to climb up the sides of that giant bowl from escaping into the great unknown that is your kitchen. In your defense, you know abso-freaking-lutely NOTHING about mantis babies. For all the wide-world of information that is at your fingertips, you trusted a box to give you all the information you needed about the safe hatching of hundreds of tiny bugs.
So, you spend the first hour of your morning hunting down baby bugs in your kitchen. BEFORE you get coffee.
FUN FACT TIME!
- Did you know that those long back legs make it super easy for a mantis to jump?
- Did you know that they will play dead?
- Did you know that they move extremely fracking fast?
- Did you know that they're so light and tiny that they practically float to the ground on their numerous suicide-bomber-like attempts to escape you?
- Did you know that kids will automatically assume they are spiders and try to squash them?
After you think you've gotten most of them, you grab your coffee and take a few minutes to catch on up internet stuff.
And you can't help but smile when you hear your spouse say, "Hey little baby, where'd you come from?" as he's getting his lunch ready. Because, really... they're kind of cute.
Who knows? Maybe they'll help with the fruit flies that always seem to ride in on your bananas.
