OK, so ten years ago I had this idea of writing a short story about a high school attended by praying mantises. The prom was coming up and many of the boy mantises were nervous. Actually all of them except for a reticent bespectacled boy mantis named George who had defiantly announced that he wasn’t going to the prom, no matter what anyone said about it.
But most of the boy mantises were nervous. Why? Because they were worried that the girl praying mantis they asked out would turn them down?
No. Actually, it was because the girl mantis might accept. It had become somewhat of a tradition at praying mantis high schools (unlike at fundamentalist schools [1]) that going out with any girl might actually lead to something sexual. Rumors were flying that, at the previous years’ prom, many of the mantis girls were eating the mantis boys. No, I’m not talking about that. Here . . . I’ll show you a lurid photo (from The Dance of Life, by Mark Walters (1988):
As you can see from the text, it can get really crazy for praying mantis “boys.” As Walters writes, a female might take the lead. She might even eat the male’s head before he has mounted her. “Mommy, tell me about the night that I was conceived . . . please.”
“Aw, gosh,” the mommy mantis might think. “When that little mantis looks at me with those cute little mantis eyes, I just can’t resist telling that story.” Well, actually, maybe I’ll let Walters tell it in his own words:
[Even though she has bit his head off before he has mounted her], the pre-programmed movement of his legs will carry his body in a circular path until it rests against her. The headless, thoroughly uninhibited insect then climbs onto the female’s back and copulates. Not only may the loss of the male’s head greatly increase his chances of impregnating the female by relieving him of his inhibitions, it may increase the survival rate of the offspring by providing the female with a good meal . . .”
I’ll resist asking the fundamentalists who might read this whether it is moral for a female praying mantis to do this or whether this kind of sex proves the existence of an intelligent designer. I just don’t know the answers to these questions. Some things just are, it seems. Sometimes I think this about many human activities that all too many people all too readily judge. Many things just are.
I don’t really have a point to this post. Perhaps mantis sex can serve as a metaphor for something. Perhaps I’ll blame Grumpy posting on war versus sex a few minutes ago. For some reason, that post reminded me of sex and violence. Whatever. Mantis sex is something that’s long fascinated me. No, I don’t subscribe to Playmantis and I don’t hang around those mantis sex chatrooms. Really. Really.
I don’t know how things turned out at the prom at the Praying Mantis Central High School. I never did write that story. Maybe I should. How would it look on the big screen?
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