We Adopted a Praying Mantis

Dixon called us back to get up early and head out to do reshoots for the film one Sunday. We had noticed on our previous trip, that there were quite a few praying mantises about in that difficult-to-discover field, so Aleks took things I said literally and brought a container in which to catch one of them.

The container ended up being too small and all manner of improvisation ensued to trap and enslave one lovely insect. We managed finally to use the container that housed our pizza lunch. We took our monarch caterpillars out of their unnecessary netting (causing one to fall off and disappear without our noticing) and placed the mantis in temporarily until a trip to the pet store the next day secured a large plastic box ideal for temporary isolation and torture of wild insects (or transport for more legitimate caged pets) and one bag of 2 dozen crickets for Zorak (what we/I named the mantis) to consume. It worked out okay, except for the loss of the monarchs, but they turned out to be death-wishful anyhow for some reason.
At first, we caught wild insects for Zorak to eat. Which he largely did.
It seems cruel, in a way, to stick live insects in a cage with a predator insect. They're all just waiting to die, really.