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“The Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do…“  David Bowie

…Except….find my true purpose, maybe.  Laura

Some of us thoughtful human types are haunted by our search for true purpose. Searching passes the time, gives us the feeling we’re accomplishing something and makes the tough parts of life more endurable.

Finding your true purpose can set you apart from all the other true-purpose seekers out there, especially if you write a best selling true-purpose book and get paid to make speeches all over the world.

Speaking of which, I’ve read snatches of the true purpose books and listened to enough of the true purpose gurus to feel OK about what I’m going to say next: People who claim to know how to find true purpose are all saying the same thing—essentially, they’re just parroting each other.

Sometimes there’s better parroting going on than others, and oftentimes I’ve seen people get really excited by a particularly pretty bird. But when the squawking dies down, there’s not much excitement left to live on. To but it bluntly, passion and motivation grounded in nothingness further weakens people.

I’ve only found one person who actually deals with the concept of true purpose by strengthening people to find their own. Plus his method is actually applicable to your daily life in all its hum-drumness.

And his name is…drum roll…..! Dr. Kam Yuen! Dr. Yuen has practical information for achieving infinite human potential. True purpose is just a minor part of infinite human potential.

To paraphrase the Grandmaster, a ton of programmed gunk needs to be incinerated, or gotten out of the way first, before you can catch a glimpse of your true purpose.

Don’t be discouraged… or do be discouraged, it doesn’t change the fact that true purpose it still under the gunk, beeping away like a homing device in your body mind spirit. You just have to dig a little is all.

Books and motivational speeches might put you in touch with the fact that there is a ‘true purpose’, but talk is useless without a plan of action. That’s where Dr. Yuen shines above all others: He has a plan and it’s a damn good one. Plus he shows you where to start digging, ‘cause true purpose is well worth finding for yourself, your family, your community, your planet and your species: Once you have true purpose, you won’t have to force yourself to stay in your integrity any more.

BAWK! Polly want some true purpose?

Ooops. Did I just say ‘force yourself to stay in your integrity’? Yes, I did! Because, as humans driven by our nonconscious, it’s almost impossible for us to stay in our integrity. It just doesn’t come naturally at all.

Come on, now, admit it. Wouldn’t you much rather get even? Getting even comes naturally, especially to frontal lobe challenged young males.  There’s a reason the young men fight the wars! The fact is, folks, humans are born with hard core programming to get even. The combined threat of jail for the body and hell for the soul helps to contain the urge and is enough for most people to choose integrity, but it’s not a natural choice.

We learn to force ourselves to ignore the urge to get even.

I can hear the angry protests, even before I print this article. All you people who are suppressing, denying, repressing, overriding and forgetting your need to get even are angry, especially you people who are relying on ‘loving’. It’s been my experience that the very people who are using loving as a cover-up get the angriest when their loving method is questioned. That’s OK, though. Loving everybody and everything is a common ploy amongst ‘spiritual leaders’ who don’t know what else to do.

I’m still standing by what I said about getting even. I’m only speaking from my own experience. After learning Dr. Yuen’s method, I’ve seen too much success in myself and others to go back to the old ways of dealing with my painful life issues—Once upon a hippie time, I tried loving, forgetting, believing, meditating, affirming, suppressing, denying and the rest of those ‘ing’ words. It was OK for back then, just not enough for my whole life.

Speaking of which, Dr. Yuen is not parroting anybody.  He speaks from the experience of looking at hundreds of thousands of humans and other life forms. He hasn’t found one human life form that isn’t driven by the need to get rid of cause and effect programming. Generally speaking, this urge for resolution is the cause of  physical, spiritual and mental malfunctions.

I’m counting on some of you reading this to find out for yourselves, or at least try to prove me wrong You have absolutely nothing to lose and your real true purpose to gain.

Let’s go back and qualify the idea that we all here to get even—I’m talking about ‘even’ on both ends of the spectrum. In other words, every one of us is driven by subconscious and non conscious urges to get even for the pain we have inflicted on others, as well as to get even for the pain that was inflicted on us.

I don’t know who started this idea or who made this rule to begin with, plus I don’t think it’s cemented in stone for all eternity. I’m just saying that at this stage in the human body, mind, spirit evolvement, we seem to crave the resolution of all our cause and effect actions. The Indians call this karma, and it reminds me of a silly electronic game: We win by blasting all our karma to smithereens before we die or we have to come back and do it again.

There’s a tricky part to the coming back part of the resolution game, though. When it comes to remembering the past actions that have left us treading water in our karma, we fall short—we resort to suppression, repression, forgetting, denial etc as our preferred mode till we die—some of us painfully, some of us quite young and/or unexpectedly. (Remembering David Carradine and Michael Jackson)

It’s kind of pathetic, because most of us run around like amnesia victims with our heads cut off trying to resolve what we don’t even remember while incurring more memories to suppress the next time around.

Whether we consciously remember anything or not, though, we are still driven to win the karma game, and are, therefore, pawns to our subconscious and nonconscious drives or programming. All we mostly manage to do, though, is create more karma or more unevenness—Unevenness that we are driven to even out the next time around. (Remember I said we were all trying to get even.)

It can get worse, too, because a lot of us create additional mounds of gunk karma in the guise of calling it our true purpose. Yes, I’m finally back to true purpose. You see, I’m on the verge of getting a glimpse of my true purpose and it’s a weird state of being, because I’m feeling kind of like I woke up from a stupid dream.

Like I hinted earlier, I didn’t get a glimpse of my true purpose all by my lonesome. I found someone else who knew how to dig for it—Dr. Kam Yuen. He developed a method to dig true purpose out from under all the subconscious and nonconscious garbage that tends to drive us out of our integrity.

His method is pretty simple, all things considered. I didn’t have to do any exercises, abstain from certain foods, use any gadgets, meditate myself into an altered state, love everybody or even believe in anything. To get closer to evenness or karmic resolution, I only needed to delete the uneven programming—programming that weakened me and kept me in a state of forced integrity.

To find this programming, I only needed to distinguish between strong and weak. To feel the difference between strong and weak, I only needed to separate logic from intuition and feeling from emotion, plus get rid of some programming. After one, private coaching session with Dr. Yuen enough programming was gone to move forward. I knew that after just one session that the method worked because results were immediate—lasting too.

Next thing you know, I was hooked on learning how to do the method myself. Now, I’m 6 seminars down the road, Dr. Yuen’s understudy and life just keeps getting more engaging for me and everyone else around me.

You can’t beat these results. At this stage of the life game, passion and motivation are energy drains. It’s the results that I’m after and I get them when I  connect with Dr. Yuen.

Three ways to connect: You can join his membership club www.millionariehealer.com and get a teaching tele-seminar monthly, you can attend a physical seminar www.YMSeminars.com, or you can get a private consultation. It just takes a little action on your part, is all—nothing to lose and your true purpose to gain!

Wanna learn a thing or two about MMS? Another name for it is Stabilized Chlorine Dioxide.

Whatever you want to call it, though, the stuff is awesome!  MMS rips apart pathogens like no body’s business, killing them dead with no nasty side effects.  Pathogens just disintegrate and fall into the black holes of your body, folks.  Plus, less pathogens equals less pain.

If you didn’t know your body had black holes, though, you’d better join the millionariehealerclub.com or attend a Dr. Kam Yuen physical seminar.  (The next one is module 1 in Toronto, July 11-12, followed by module 2 in San Rafael, CA July 17-18 ).

Back to disintegrating pathogens. Malaria is a prime example.  When exposed to stabilized chlorine dioxide, malaria cannot survive.  Black mold is another life form that goes its harmless way after getting a dose of stabilized chlorine dioxide.

Just so we are clear.  Pathogens are harmfully infectious agents:  viruses, fungi, bacteria, molds, yeast, and who knows what other little buggers, as yet undetected by modern microscopic equipment.

Stabilized Chlorine Dioxide is your friend. (Repeat after me…”stabilized chlorine dioxide is my friend.”)

Seriously folks, It cruises through the body like a mini tornado sniffing for electrons to rip apart. By using MMS, you are helping your body rid itself of pathogens that wantonly colonize human tissue, bone and/or blood with no regard for your continued existence.  Don’t just sit there cringing! Paralysis won’t get you anywhere!

Do something right now about unwanted bacteria, fungi, molds, yeasts and viruses.  In other words, do something about the common cold, yeast infections and the Swine Flu:  Swallow a few drops of stabilized chlorine dioxide and feel the benefits throughout your entire body.  Feel it cruise through your cells like a mini tornado sniffing for pathogenic electrons to rip apart.

I’ll tell you another thing Dr. Yuen says:  When you rid your mouth of low level infections, other body cavities improve too.  Dr. Yuen talks about body cavities all the time—how they tend to mimic each other.  Once again, if you don’t know about body cavity mimicry, you’d best join Dr. Yuen’s Club.

Click www.Millionairehealer.com

When people talk about the Canary Islands, they’re referring to seven main volcanic islands and several islets that form a chain extending for ~ 500 km across the Atlantic, its eastern edge being only 100 km from the NW African coast.

Everyone knows these islands were formed by volcanic eruptions, caused mostly by hotspots in the oceanic crust; but no one knows for certain why the lava erupted in this particular area of the Atlantic Ocean and when the land masses formed.  The actual origin of the magmatism in the Canaries and its complicated space-time relationships have been a subject of debate for many years.

Here is a link to some fine pictures of volcanic formations throughout the archipelago. Calderas and fissure vents (linear openings through which lava erupts) are abundant.

If you want some interesting historical data, present day statistics and/or tourism info, follow this link to Wikipedia.

Personally, I’m interested in the food aspect, and Wikipedia doesn’t say much about what’s to eat. After carefully combing the internet, I’ve found something that looks mighty tasty:  Canary Islands’ cuisine, I’m told, combines traditional Spanish recipes with African and Latin American influences.

A very simple and well-known Canary Island recipe, for example, is papas arrugadas: potatoes boiled in salt-water with their peelings on then served with mojo picon,a hot sauce of oil, garlic, chili-peppers and paprika. Yum, yum yum.  Click the above links for tried and true authentic recipes.  The local Canarian wine, a mellow flavored and not too sweet concoction from the Malvasia grape, compliments all the spiciness.

In addition to the divinely natural architecture, humans have created some fine masterpieces in the larger cities. There is everything from Moorish to Modern, the latter of which can be seen in the picture.

Wikipedia doesn’t tell you this, either, but Las Palmas is famous for its miracle cures.  Tourists have been frequenting the Canary islands for centuries in search of alternative health cures.  The natural beauty of this area, along with the temperate climate, make for a friendly, open thinking environment–one that is good for letting go of conventional ideas. (Hint Hint)

Today everything changed for the better: Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States.  As soon as he (’faithfully’) spoke that last word from the Oath of Office there was a shift.  Could you feel it?

If you missed the exact moment, just put your attention on the Obama Inauguration and the difference is still in the air. I figure it’s from the overwhelming lightness of raised expectations, or even the feeling of all nations uniting under a new,  intelligent leadership aimed at keeping our planet alive. (Imagine that.)

Whatever the reason, with Obama comes a noticeably strong feeling for good change—strong, not only for our nation’s future but for the future of the entire world.

We could look at it like this. Once again, there are more possibilities for education, advancement and achievement in all things good. Plus these pathways have opened up for many more people who had little chance for self improvement during the last 8 years.

In other words, where there was weakness, there is now strength.

The difference between the weakness of the Bush/Cheney regime versus the strength of the Obama presidency is palpable. And I am not using this word lightly, either. I know most of you can feel the difference in your body.  Just shut off your mind and switch back and forth between the two presidencies with the idea of feeling.

Pause to feel.

OK, everybody, this is where you might want to pay attention. What if this simple concept of strong and weak could be applied to everyday life with its everyday circumstances? What if anybody could tap into those feelings of strong and weak at anytime?

To put it bluntly, you would know the best choices for yourself and your loved ones: This would include  the best solutions to any of life’s problems.  Here’s the good part.  With this knowledge comes the realization of your own potential along with optimum health in body, mind and spirit.

All answers to life’s questions would be based on the simple feelings of strong and weak. It would be like a pulse you could easily check in on at any time, at any place.

Think about it……correction…feel it.

Just a while back, Chris and I were walking down a dry, overflow bed right next to the Shasta River. We were in search of a few good rocks to make a pathway but instead found a long shedded snakeskin!

Right away, he got really excited, but the sight of that long thing entwined around the rocks made my stomach queasy. Naturally, though, I made myself pick it up, just to prove that I’m a sensible female. But to tell the truth, it was really hard for me to touch the sloughed-off skin without cringing. So I just stood there, four feet of snakeskin draped over both arms. I couldn’t help but think of those weird, serpent-handling Pentecostal folk in the hills of Appalachia.

Why do they do that?  Drink strychnine and play with poisonous vipers?  Snakes don’t even like to be in the limelight, much less get man-handled.

As I understand it, Pentecostals believe Jesus Christ is inside them handling the serpents, using their hands and brains. Everything I’ve heard about Jesus, though, makes me think that he had better things to do than to play with snakes. Some of the temptation of this religious practice must be the ‘high’ the ‘anointed’ get from drinking rat poison, plus their addiction to endorphins. Let’s face it, folks, snake handlers have got to be flooded with the highest adrenalin counts imaginable. Follow the link for more info.

Getting back to the snakeskin we found, though: I didn’t know snakes had eyeball coverings. But there they were—intact and clear as could be, like perfect little cups. It was truly amazing to picture how the casings must have pealed off its eyes! When I checked the tail part, a much more unsettling thought popped into my brain— this might be a rattle snake’s sloughing.

So I immediately draped the whole thing around Chris’ neck and shoulders, just in case poisonous venom could still get to me in some unfathomable way. Being a curious boy, Chris is definitely more the serpent handling type.

Our next stop was the National Park Service, where this tan, outdoorsy dude told us our treasured snake-sloughing definitely came from a rattler, ‘cause the head was diamond shaped. Plus you could see where the tail part had peeled itself off with a hole instead of a point. Rattlesnakes don’t shed skin from their rattle tails—in fact, that’s how their tails are made. Another rattle adds itself to the stack every time they shed, which can be 3 or 4 times a year depending.

We also learned about the incredible heat sensing pit below and back of the rattler’s nostril that it uses to hone in on warm blooded prey. This sense organ just happens to be more sensitive than our nose and mouth combined. At this point, I was becoming very intrigued about this fine rattlesnake fellow that had left its skin in our path. I mean, when’s the last time humans honed in on some warm blooded prey? And when’s the last time we had to bite it to death in one try?

When a rattler finds its prey, the strike is over in less that 0.5 seconds, and if its targeting is a bit off, it merely repositions both fangs at the speed of light (a slight exaggeration). Unlike the Eastern Diamondback whose venom mostly paralyzes you, the Pacific Rattlesnake’s toxin acts in the bloodstream. If you happen to be one of the relative few thousands that gets bit every year by Rattlers, don’t succumb to the urge to take off running, just because your legs still work. That will only serve to pump the venom through your body faster.

Generally speaking, I’m not a snake person—one of those types who constantly goes out looking. That’s not to say I don’t admire and appreciate a good snake, especially one that keeps to itself while feasting on bothersome rodents.

Our National Forest Service says that one single rattlesnake can cut the rodent population in any given area by 25% per year. Without rattlesnakes, we’d be overrun in no time. I am happy, however, that rattlesnakes are the only poisonous snakes native to California. That’s not saying that some nitwit who keeps exotic pets in captivity won’t accidentally let a King Cobra get loose and start a family. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Speaking of bridges, I think I’ll finish up with a story about my Granddaddy Turner:

One summer’s day in rural Mississippi just a bit south of Memphis, he and my daddy, along with some buddies, were seining a bar-pit next to the Tallahatchie Bridge for some catfish bait (minnows and crawdads).

My daddy says a seine is a large fishing net with corks at the top and lead weights at the bottom that you drag through the water. Anyway, Granddaddy Turner happened to have his fingers dangling in the muddy water. They probably resembled a cluster of fat juicy worms, ‘cause all of a sudden he brought his hand straight out of the water like a torpedo with a long snake attached by its teeth to the middle two. That stubborn snake had no intention of letting go. …What in the world was he going to do?

Rather than rip-off part of his hand, Granddaddy plunged it back under water till the snake decided that air was more important than a mouthful of worms. Needless to say, everybody could see right away that the snake wasn’t a deadly watermoccasin, but they were still impressed with Granddaddy Turner’s quick thinking under duress.

There’s a moral here, though……if you can help it, don’t use your fingers as bait.

Because of close encounters like these, my daddy instilled in me a greatly needed respect for snakes. Cottonmouths and copperheads were everywhere in Mississippi, but Daddy said he never saw a Rattler.

So I’m having the Great Printer in Salt Lake print up and mail him a SendOutCard with Chris holding the rattlesnake next to a yardstick like a trophy fish. That ought to give him a good laugh.

Guess what, folks! Wildfires aren’t the only things that have no regard for state lines. I’ve got at least one Oregon Fence Lizard living in my Northern California yard. I’m also pretty sure this border crosser is female, because of her neutral coloring.

Compared to males, females aren’t that fancy––no markings on the belly, no blue or green color on the top part, mostly just camouflage greens and browns. Therefore, I’m deeming the lizard female and calling her Liz, for short.

Liz is not shy like her more reclusive counterpart the alligator lizard. She very much enjoys hanging out in the early morning sun on a rock, or on a charred tree snag—just one of the many reminders in these parts of wildfires. She darts straight for her destination rather than undulates, again making me think she’s a fence lizard, since the alligator variety moves like a snake. If I could only see the birthing process, I’d know for sure what Liz is, ’cause fence lizards lay eggs while the alligator kind squirt their babies out alive–just like we do.  Imagine that.

Here’s another glorious tidbit: The common fence lizard performs a mighty service to humanity by controling the spread of Lyme disease. According to Robert Lane, professor of Insect Biology, “the lizard’s blood contains a substance – probably a heat sensitive protein – that kills the Lyme disease spirochete…” Hence, the reason that Lyme disease is more of a problem in states that aren’t blessed with the Western Fence Lizard.

In other words, folks, when infected ticks feed on Oregon fence-lizard blood, the evil Lyme bacterium is destroyed. Anybody got more respect for the common Western Fence Lizard? Not only do they purify the tick for life, Robert Lane went on to say that these sweet little reptiles host more ticks than most rodents. I’m thinking, though, that Mr. Lane is not counting the big rodents, more commonly known as deer.

Some suggest that killing off deer until there are only 12 per square mile is the way to reduce Lyme Disease. I wonder if killing helps in the long run, though. Wouldn’t the ticks just catch a ride on a passing chipmunk or squirrel? Maybe there’ s just not enough natural predators– such as mountain lions and coyotes–to keep the deer population under control.

People around here killed too many wild carnivores, and it didn’t help anything except the deer and rodent population. Next thing you know, we were overrun with pesky mice varmints that took up residence in our vehicles, using engine wiring and tubing as their primary food source. Depending on the vehicle, this can set you back thousands. Sad to say, Chris and I know first-hand how mice like to put down their winter roots in warm vehicles. I guess it goes without saying that spending all that money to rewire our engine didn’t even fix the problem. The field mice were pleased that we had provided more sustenance for them. We finally got tired of setting rodent traps under our hood every night, so we (meaning Chris) made room for our car in the garage.

One almond grower by the name of Ged told me that he and his buddy sit back-to-back in their orchards for hours at a time (literally), shooting squirrels that would wolf down their whole crop of nuts, if allowed to procreate. I don’t blame the farmers for protecting their nuts. I don’t even blame them for shooting the coyotes that killed the squirrels that eat the nuts. I just wish we humans would learn to look ahead.

Take our neighbors down the road, for example: They decided to raise cute, docile sheep right out in their lush meadow–without a shepherd or any barking dogs. When a mountain lion started eating one sheep every so often, they had California Fish and Game tree it and shoot it dead.

Now technically speaking, Mountain Lions are a “specially protected species” and can’t be harmed unless declared a “public threat“. I still can’t figure out why Fish and Game didn’t relocate the carnivore to a mountainous area with no pet sheep. Instead, they classified it as a public threat. I don’t know how it fit those specific guidelines–I only know it wasn’t one till somebody put tempting woolly treats in its path.

Now I’m off on a tangent and wondering how I got there.

No matter. I have a lovely picture of Liz (remember Liz) that I’m having made into a greeting card as a simple reminder of how the commonest life form is often a great boon to humanity in disguise. How many ticks Liz has neutralized is anybody’s guess.

The truth is, I feel much safer just knowing creatures like Liz are in this world. I hope she has many babies and lives in my yard a long long time.

I'll bite your head off.

Did you know that the name ‘mantis’ comes form the Greek ‘mantis’, meaning prophet or diviner? Did you know that the praying mantis is named for its humble folded claw position and not its ability to prey on creatures five times its size?

European mantis demonstrating its ability to hang sideways

Chris and I found this formidable looking insect on our screen door.  No doubt it was on the hunt for crickets or other juicy tidbits. There are times, though, when the chosen tidbits seem kind of large. I don’t want to find out if this particular 2-3 inch mantis could bite the head off a lizard, mouse, snake, tarantula, hornet or hummingbird, but the bigger ones can.

Before you decide to keep a praying mantis as a pet, think on that and know this: In some states it’s illegal to make a pet of a praying mantis, unless the mantis is foreign, i.e. Chinese or European. Both were introduced into the Northeastern U.S. about 80 years ago in the hopes of controlling crop-eating insects.

Back to the law: How can you know when you’re committing the crime of imprisoning a native?  The Chinese mantis is more brownish and has a green lateral stripe down the front wing, while the European sports a black ring on its leg, like the one we found (see above).  As usual, Wikipedia puts it more scientifically: The Euro mantis is easily distinguished  by a black-ringed spot beneath the fore coxae.

Since there are at least 20 species native to the U.S., if you see one, best not try to domesticate it. When I was a kid, someone (might have been my mother) encouraged my little brother to keep a praying mantis trapped between the glass and the screen of his bedroom window—supposedly the perfect open air environment, i.e. cage, though some swear you don’t need bars.

Occasionally, I watched my little brother fiddle with the odd looking creature, feed it live crickets, flies and spiders, hoping for some bonding.  I think it was supposed to earn him a merit badge, too—you know, the kind that Boy Scouts get.  If you’re hot to know more about scouting badges and insects, follow this link to Insect Life Merit Badge.

Speaking of which, the praying mantis is the only insect in the known world that can swivel its head from side to side in a 180 degree radius. If you want to see some very cool detailed shots of the mantis, click here.  Did I say shots? What I meant was brilliant new photographic techniques pioneered by David Yager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland.

Yager photographs his mantids (praying mantises) dozens of times, “each shot focused a few ten-thousandths of an inch deeper than the last.  A computer melds those views into a single image that is simultaneously focused throughout the insect.”

Why does Yager do this?  So his students can explore the mantids’ inner ear. What’s so neat about an inner ear?  Of the 2300 different species of mantids, most share the highly peculiar trait of having just one ear, located smack dab in the middle of the chest.

Moving on.  The praying mantis is one of those insects that gives women a bad name:  That’s because the female is known to bite the head off her mate, but only during copulation. This doesn’t deter the male in any way, so they say; in fact, it speeds up his ejaculation process.  And how do we know that the sperm gets a healthy boost just as the male is decapitated?  Because male researchers find this sexual cannibalism so fascinating that they have devoted many hours to watching it happen.

Sad to say, the watching might be what causes it, though.  In confined laboratory conditions with bright lights in her face, the female is more likely to eat the male, possibly as a means of survival, possibly because the dude was not an adequate lover. Who knows? I choose to think she is killing the male out of the goodness of her heart, saving him from the degrading hopelessness of life long imprisonment.

Back to the mating process: Like many other females, the mantis secretes a pheromone to attract the male and let him know she’s ready.  Sometimes he approaches from the front and other times he makes a flying leap from behind, depending on his mood or preference.

During one experiment, a mantis couple was observed copulating for six hours.  Afterwards, her lover was allowed to fly away, its head unscathed, thereby proving my point that females let the good lovers live on.  If you want to see a mating pair of Chinese mantises, follow the link.  Don’t worry, I searched long and hard to find the happy ending; but I warn you, it was at the expense of a cricket.

Although the praying mantis is known for its cannibalistic mating process, there is good evidence that it only occurs 5-31% of the time. Dan Feldman, mantis voyeur extraordinaire, says decapitation happens mostly because the female is hungry and a mate’s head provides an instant source of energy for her.  Now, there’s a thought!

But there are other explanations, folks: As we know, the mating act generally takes place without a camera and bright lights, so rather than leaning over the tank to study their every move, one group of researchers left the two love-mantises alone and videotaped what happened.

Lo and behold, they were amazed. Out of thirty private matings, there was not one instance of decapitation. Instead, the camera filmed an elaborate courtship display, with both sexes performing a ritual dance, stroking each other with their antennae before finally uniting in ecstasy. “It really was a lovely display”, one fellow reported, leading to his conclusion that sexual cannibalism occurs most often only if the female is stressed or hungry.

Still another researcher, thinks the head eating also benefits the male, since his cranium serves as a kind of vitamin injection for his offspring who will now be strong in a world where survival of the species is everything. Plus, he gets to pass on his own genes. Whoopee! The fact of the matter is, sexual cannibalism isn’t unheard of in nature. The male redback and orbweb spiders fall prey to their lovers, not to mention the infamous black widow.

Despite its mating habits or maybe because of, the praying mantis has historically been quite the star of mythology and folklore. More recently, a mantis starred in the Hollywood production of the sci-fi thriller, The Deadly Mantis (1957).  The plot revolved around a giant female that hatched after a volcanic eruption melted its Arctic ootheca (encasement).  Hmmm, does anyone see a remake using global warming?

Back to the old folk tales: French people believed a praying mantis would point a lost child home and help wandering lovers. Lost Muslims looked for a mantis to point them towards Mecca.  Some Africans tribes thought a mantis could raise the dead. Americans were certain that mantis juices blinded men and killed horses.  But the Chinese had it down pat: Nothing cured bedwetting better than roasted mantis eggs.  I don’t know exactly what they did with those eggs, but knowing the Chinese, they ate them pickled or in a stir-fry.

Speaking of eggs, after mating, the female lays up to 400 in batches that are enclosed in a tough, spongy encasement or ootheca. You can find oothecas attached to fence posts, twigs and stems, or buried in the ground.  Some vigilant females stand guard over their eggs until the nymphs (young) emerge, unless it takes all winter, that is.

With or without mom’s watchful presence, the eggs hatch in 3 weeks to 6 months depending on the temperature and humidity. The young finally emerge from tiny holes in the casing, looking exactly like their parents, only smaller. Because the nymphs grow quickly and their skin doesn’t, they molt (shed their skin) while maturing into adults—adults like the European mantis (see pic) Chris and I found.