I walked out the front door the other day and just about stepped on this:



We see several of these a year; I don't know whether they're native to the area because I know people can buy them to use as natural pest controls in their gardens. I think they're kind of fun. You should have seen this one teetering back and forth as it walked across the sidewalk to get away from me. If it had been really scared, though, it should have spread out its wings.

According to Wikipedia, the correct name is "mantis" and "praying mantis" is the colloquial name. It's often called "preying mantis." It's good at camouflage—I thought it was interesting that this one was brown; usually the ones I see are green.