Image of Carolina Mantis

Description:

The female I originally found a month earlier (in mid-late August) on the raspberry bush in my backyard; I had read about people raising mantids, so I put her in my back porch, which was covered in a screen with the door open to the outside such that various insects would fly in daily, providing the mantis with an easy source of food (mostly flies). The male came to the back porch a few weeks later. Both stayed there until late November at the male's death and the female's disappearance. These mantids are mating in the pictures; the date of my observation of the mating is what is recorded. They mated several times, but the female never ate the male. The female did lay an ootheca; the nymphs that hatched from it are observed at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/519384