Praying Mantis

The ladybug weaves its way through the mottled leaves of the tree, the spots on its back melding perfectly with the spots on the leaves. If any humans are watching and are trying to follow it with their eyes, they will see it disappear and reappear in their vision. But not for me. Evolution has gifted me with two compound eyes with more than ten thousand smaller eyes clustered in them, capable of following even the wiliest of camouflaged insects with incredible visual acuity. The ladybug, probably feeling secure in its natural camouflage, stands no chance.

I lie in wait, watching the shadows dance on the bright green leaves, their shiny surfaces glinting with sunlight. It is still a few seconds before the ladybug will inexorably make its way into my sweet spot, but I’m alert and taut, all my muscles primed with anticipation, ready for action. It is taking its sweet time, checking out the underside of a leaf, even stopping to inspect a crick in the otherwise smooth, almost waxy surface. But it is finally approaching my area now, completely unaware of the trap it is falling into. Right before it steps into my zone, I use the tension in my legs to jump – the world before my eyes blur, with only the ladybug in focus. Just as I am about to pounce on it, I realise that I have overshot my jump. I shoot past the surprised bug, my left foreleg harmlessly tapping it on the back. As I’m about to land, I see through my stereoscopic vision the ladybug flying away – spooked, but alive.

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My home is this big tree, beside a wide lake where the sun shines bright and the wind is always strong. I do not know what kind of a tree it is, but it always has plentiful insects, enough to support me and my brethren. I was born last winter – coming out of my egg in the ootheca – a collection of a few hundred eggs hung on to a low branch of the tree. I witnessed a few of my brothers and sisters being born around the same time – but we are solitary creatures, and we went our own way. I have spent months on this tree, hunting and feeding, growing bigger and stronger. A week ago, I had even managed to attract a female and mated with her. She was kind and did not rip off my head and consume me as we were in the throes of copulation. We do have enough food around here anyway, and I guess that has made the mantis who live here less cannibalistic. She has laid a few hundred eggs in her own ootheca – the next generation of us – who will hatch in the next few weeks.

I do find myself more sluggish nowadays. I mistime my jumps, I find myself overshooting or undershooting, and sometimes I find myself in places I do not remember going to. And I miss most of my prey. Maybe I’m just getting old – we have the lifespan of around a year, and even though my time is still not nearly up, it might be getting close.

Or maybe I have a horsehair worm. A lot of my brethren will consume a fly which is infected with horsehair larva and get infected themselves. An adult worm will form inside them, consuming them from within, growing multiple lengths of their size, all coiled up inside. And when it has consumed all it can, it’ll cause them to want to jump into the water, coming out of their mantis husk and laying eggs to infect insects and repeat the cycle all over again. I look at this process in the same way as I look at a ladybug. We all need to feed and survive, and there is no judgement on what you need to do survive.

I have developed a taste for ladybugs, though. Ladybugs are fantastic creatures, and even though I make a meal out of them, I respect their role in the ecosystem. They prey on smaller insects like aphids, scales and mites, whose unchecked proliferation will stunt the growth of the tree which supports us all. In the same way, a proliferation of ladybugs will endanger the delicate balance in the gossamer web of ecological niches which compete and consume and keep each other in check.

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Today I find myself again at a place where I do not remember coming. It’s a higher branch of the tree that is way above my usual hunting ground. I wonder if the horsehair worm is finally making me jump to my demise. But it doesn’t seem to fit – my brethren infected with that usually climb down and jump into the water. Instead, I find myself climbing up. As far as I know, they are usually lucid and in control of themselves, until they find themselves compelled to jump into the water. In any case, I climb down to my usual height and look for a prey.

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I do not know what is happening to me. Today I find myself at a high branch again, and I cannot control my limbs. My legs are moving on their own accord, one sluggish step after another, climbing up the trunk of the tree. Being this high is making me feel light-headed, but I cannot stop myself from ascending any more than I can read the thoughts of my brothers infected with horsehair worms. I feel like a prisoner in my own body, inexorably inching towards my demise, or something worse. As I rack my brain trying to find a plausible explanation for this, it suddenly clicks for me. I’m probably infected with Cordyceps. I have seen a few spiders dead, far away from their webs, their body deformed and discoloured, with a few fingerlike growths from their abdomen. The husk of their body mutilated beyond recognition. I did not realise Cordyceps infected my species as well.

As I hop and jump up the trunk with sluggish imprecision, I get a glimpse of my back. I cannot control my vision any more than I can control my limbs, but I see my formerly green back mottled brown and yellow with bulbous growths Those are probably the fruiting body of the fungi that has infected me. After it has consumed me and gathered enough nutrients, it will burst the tip and release the spores that’ll infect more of my brethren. I snap out of my thoughts due to a change in the way I was moving and notice that I’m not climbing up anymore, instead going laterally towards the tip of branch. I am quite high up now, and every slow step towards the tip is making me more and more nauseous.

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I wake up this time with my leaden legs fixed in place and my vision fixed downwards. I did not notice this before, but my legs look emaciated and discoloured too – perhaps my whole body is discoloured. I’m at the tip of the branch, overlooking the lake, at my final resting place. As I move in and out of consciousness, I notice a few branches below me the ootheca that my mate had laid, teeming with hundreds of my offsprings who will hatch soon. And as I lay dying, I realise my final legacy will be infecting my offsprings with the fungi right when they hatch.

This piece was produced in a writing challenge – to write from a perspective of a flora or a fauna. The protagonistic insect, praying mantis, was selected for me. “Final legacy of infecting my offsprings” can be regarded as an allusion to parents inoculating offsprings with generational trauma or racism or sexism, even though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned.