The Pack
Jeweled
This summer I saw a praying mantid consuming a butterfly. It was the most graceful, sinister dance—those grasping legs pulling and poking the butterfly’s writhing abdomen, separating it from the wings (which fell, like bits of torn, burnt paper, to the ground); that astonishing pyramidal head, so neat and fastidious, moving back and forth as the mandibles chewed. It was a remarkable sight.
This photograph moves me because it seems so still, so full of quiet. Those jade-colored wings seem just as thin and brittle as the butterfly wings I saw falling. The predator has become an ornament, and seems far more vulnerable because of it. Instead of seizing its prey by the belly, it seems almost as if its own soft green parts might soon adorn a lady’s blouse.
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