Waiter, There’s A Praying Mantis In My Soup
Two out of the ordinary things happened this morning even before breakfast. Floating in my bedside glass of water was the lifeless carcass of a moth, having evidently drowned some time during the night. Outside on the terrace, equally lifeless, was a strawberry. I don’t grow strawberries, I have none in the house and haven’t had for some considerable time, so exactly how a big juicy red strawberry could end up just laying there on the paving slab a few feet from my door is something of a mystery.
Whilst the story of the strawberry is one to ponder, it doesn’t evoke the same sense of injustice as the story of the moth. Never mind the fate of the fruit, I find myself far more sympathetic with the misfortune of the moth. My bedroom window was only open a small way given the unseasonably chilly nights this June is delivering, and even then at an upward angle which would require an awkward flight path to gain entry, one which would necessitate a certain level of geometric calculation by any trespassing moth.
Yet in it must have come. There was no light to draw it in, I am 60 odd years beyond needing a night light, so why did it even feel the need to enter the house in the first place? And then, having wandered into a place where there was absolutely nothing to be gained for an airborne nocturnal creature, it found the one small item which would spell certain death for a moth: a glass of water, the surface area of which must be a minute percentage of all of the places it could have landed. One can only speculate at how fate dealt with that unfortunate little creature, a series of events which demonstrate that when your time is up, your time is up. It’s perhaps as well that I hadn’t taken a sip of that water during the hours of darkness – in such circumstances the moth’s run of bad luck would have gotten even worse, as indeed may have my own.
As for the praying mantis, his lot was just as compellingly mysterious and equally as final. There we were, Michaela and I, eating the first course of our first meal at the safari camp in Tanzania, the honeymoon stretching before us and the memories of a perfect wedding day still fresh in our minds, when a light plopping sound and a tiny splash of liquid scheduled the unexpected arrival of a praying mantis, slap bang in the middle of Michaela’s liquid starter.
“Waiter!”, called Michaela, scarcely able to conceal her “Carry On” style amusement, “there’s a praying mantis in my soup!”. The joke was lost on the locals, even with Michaela adeptly adopting the tone of an indignant Joan Sims, but it kept the two of us amused for the rest of the meal. A diehard vegan may well have lodged a more formal complaint.
Fate had played its hand there as well: if your time is up, your time is up. When my nephew was driving across Australia twenty odd years ago, on one of those long stretches of dead straight road, he had just commented to his girlfriend that they hadn’t seen another car for nearly an hour, when a glint of sunlight on metal said that things were about to change and two drivers were each about to pass another vehicle for the first time in many, many miles.
As they approached each other, hands no doubt poised to exchange a flash of headlights, a young kangaroo bounded across the road and got hit by BOTH of the only two cars to pass that way in an hour. When your time is up…
Back to this morning, and all that’s left now is to remove the strawberry and wonder again, albeit briefly, how it came to be there on my patio. Dropped by a bird flying overhead? Thrown by a prankster schoolboy from the other side of the wall? Dragged there and half eaten by a fox who decided half way through that it didn’t like fruit? Or maybe, just maybe, it was an alien being falling from space and mysteriously morphing into fruit as it passed through the Earth’s atmosphere, just like the bowl of petunias in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
“Oh no, not again”, would have been the thought of the strawberry, just like the petunias. One can only wonder if the praying mantis had the same thought.
22 Comments
Monkey's Tale
Imagine the title of this post if you drank the water logged moth. Mothman comes to mind 😊
Phil & Michaela
Ha yes, fortunately I was spared the taste…
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
I like Maggie’s comment above! 😊
Phil & Michaela
😁
Travels Through My Lens
Very entertaining Phil and had me smiling throughout. It reminds me of my friend in Australia who opened her dishwasher one day and found a dead snake. Some may think of these things as omens, others adopt the “that’s life” attitude.
Phil & Michaela
A dead snake in the dishwasher – wow! That’s a story in its own right…
WanderingCanadians
And this is exactly why I put a water bottle instead of a glass on my nightstand. Well, that and my cat has the habit of knocking things off my nightstand when he demands attention.
Phil & Michaela
Good move on two counts!
wetanddustyroads
I once told Berto that we have to put cameras in and outside the house for a couple of nights – the things I sometimes see in the morning (which weren’t there the night before) make me think there’s a lot more going on at night than what we think … not everybody is fast asleep! Did the praying mantis survived the incident?
Phil & Michaela
He did! In his case, time wasn’t yet up.
Toonsarah
I had to smile (a lot!) while reading this 🙂 My bet regarding the strawberry is that a bird dropped it, having bitten off more than he could chew. But the moth is another matter. Could he have been hiding somewhere in the house before you went to bed perhaps? The praying mantis reminds me of something we were told in Namibia, that you can tell how many times someone has visited Africa by their reaction to getting a fly in their beer. If it’s their first visit they tip the beer away and order a fresh one. If it’s their second, they scoop out the fly and carry on drinking. And if it’s their third (or more), they simply carry on as if the fly weren’t there 😀
Phil & Michaela
Ha, yes I get that. In Sri Lanka, every beer is served with a rolled up funnel of newspaper in the neck of the bottle, for the same reason. And by the way, I would never have been “number one” – throw away a beer? Sacrilege!!
grandmisadventures
What a weird night at your house. The strawberry feels like the beginning of an running joke while the moth…that would have made a really weird moment had you tried to drink it
Phil & Michaela
And it straight away made me think of the praying mantis!
Annie Berger
What an odd combination of circumstances to occur at home. It’s one thing for this to happen on the road but at home, just weird! By the way, glad to see you posting again as it’s been a while. I was getting concerned about and for you after your last revelation.
Phil & Michaela
Not much to write about when we’re not travelling, Annie! Still very frustrating, so ready to put our plans into action but still unable to commit. Hopefully we’ll know more very soon.
leightontravels
The praying mantis would have put an end to my appetite that evening. As for the strawberry, it was DEFINITELY an alien. There is literally no other rational explanation. I totally subscribe to the “when your time is up…” mantra. Just gotta do what we do, live our best lives and see what we get.
Phil & Michaela
Precisely! And in the meantime, here we go with the euros…..
Alison
I was thinking the same as Maggie! The strawberry, a gift from above and the Praying Mantis, thirsty like the moth. I would not have been as calm as Michaela though.
Phil & Michaela
She was simply amused, no other emotion!
Lookoom
You’re going through all sorts of adventures, really. And isn’t this strawberry the gift of a generous bird?
Phil & Michaela
I should imagine so, in truth