Praying Mantis babies

This was by far one of the coolest things we did this summer. I ordered a praying mantis egg off of the insect lore website where we order our butterflies from. We popped it into the mesh container... and waited and waited and waited. And then one day I heard a funny noise while I was doing dishes and all these praying mantis's were hatching out of the egg! I think we had over 100 when everything was said and done. We were super lucky to be home when it was happening, I think the whole thing took maybe 1.5 hours at best. Will and Alyssa were both enthralled with watching them pop out of the egg sack. We kept them for a day and then let them go into our garden and into Grammy and Pappy's garden. If you keep them too long, they just start to eat each other... and that's not very fun to watch :) We will definitely be doing the praying mantis egg next year!