praying mantis savers
A warm fall day, and I'm riding my bike on the road that cuts through the woods. As soon I had entered the woods, I got excited thinking about the Praying Mantises that like to hang out in the road. "Praying Mantises don't know what we call them! They don't even know they have names!" That's what I was saying to myself. And then I wondered if they have names for each other, but probably not.
Soon after this I came around a bend and a ways down the road I saw a woman, first bending over, then standing up and appearing to look at something on the ground. Right away, I knew she had found a Praying Mantis. When I got closer, I glanced at the woods to my right in case I was wrong and she was actually looking at some deer, which I didn't want to spook. But when I got within talking range of her and slowed down, she said "It's a Praying Mantis."
I knew it was, I told her. They're everywhere around here. This was the first one she saw, she said. She had stood there to make sure I didn't run over it. She was unaware that I was also a Praying Mantis saver, and that I had already been scanning the ground ahead of me. I asked her if she had picked it up as I dismounted my bike, and she said no, she had only taken some pictures, but I could pick it up if I wanted to. As I scooped it up, I saw out of the corner of my eye that she had turned and was walking away now. I went onto the grass on the other side of the road and held the mantis up to my face to see it better. It was perfectly at ease, more-so than any I had ever picked up. I watched it clean its legs, and at one point it was even licking my hand.
By the time I set it on the ground to go on its way, the woman had already made it to the next bend and was out of sight. I eventually caught up to her since she was only walking, but I passed by her without saying anything. I had thought about talking to her again, but I figured if she had been interested, she would have stuck around at least a few seconds longer. She would have said more. I can only guess that she was going home to her special person after, or that something about me said I wasn't her type. It's also possible that she's just like me, and she was hoping that I would say more, and figured I wasn't interested because I didn't, but I'll never know. That's life sometimes. Around the world, a billion chances a day get missed because we're afraid of taking a risk.
This is how I've always wanted to meet someone. Not when I'm bored and looking out of desperation, but when I'm living. Just two people out in the wild doing something that feels perfectly natural and empowering, instead of submitting to the system that profits from keeping us all apart. Haven't we all had this same dream?
~
September 29th 2026