God and the Preying Mantis

OK, here's another bat-free post. Sorry, but it's really hard to work bats in when I'm forced to study pickleweed distributions and iguana metabolism. I took this photo yesterday up at China Camp state park, doing a field survey for my plant ecology class. This Preying Mantis was climbing on the dodder-infested pickleweed (Cuscuta-infested Salicornia to me) and posed nicely. It was really big and it was both cool and creepy. Its head swiveled as it watched me watching it. Note that it's preying, not praying, but it's not a bad transition to my other topic. My friend Lisa sent me a hilarious article on the hot new religion worshipping FSM, a.k.a. the flying spaghetti monster. This is a very clever way to illuminate the high nonsense-to-meaning ratio of the current science vs. creationism debate, detectable even here at a state university campus. Seems likely that the preying mantis would not be too interested in worshipping pasta, unless it was a kind of bug pasta, but I'm sure the Great Noodly One knows better than me.