Yet another new bug...

I wish Mother Nature would give me a blessed break.

On the porch ceiling last night, just outside our back door, I noticed this thing hanging upside down... long and thin, with even longer and thinner legs.... and it kept moving its head from side to side to look down at me as I looked up at it.

My husband looked at the bug and we both thought it could be some sort of 'praying mantis.'  He didn't want to kill it, or even move it, because those bugs are "good bugs," he told me. (Is there really such a thing?)

This morning, that good bug was still up there in the same spot, with its neck swiveling to watch me as I tried to get in and out of the back door. (Did it really stay up there on the ceiling all night long, hanging upside-down like a bat?)  I was imagining that if I slammed the back door, that bug would come falling down on my head. (Not exactly a good thing for a good bug to do.)  So there I was, tip-toeing out the back door and closing the door so softly, trying not to disturb that bug this morning.

Enough already.  I asked my husband to please come downstairs and move his good bug further out into the garden so I wouldn't have that ugly-looking thing hanging over my head every time I walked out the back door.  My husband took the broom and tried to get the bug to walk on the broom so he could bring it to the flowerbed and release it there. The bug wasn't cooperating at all.

When my husband tried to be more persistent with the broom, the bug curled up his tail like a scorpion. Well, that did it. No more Mr. Nice Guy and his 'good bug' theory...... my husband took that broom and slammed it against that bug at least nine times. (The porch is just fine, by the way, but the bug is history.)

Turns out it wasn't a praying mantis at all... not even close. It was something called a 'stick bug,' and they will curl up their tails as a defensive ploy, but they don't sting or even bite.  This stick bug was brown, and thin, and it looked like a stick with long legs. Ugly, ugly... and prehistoric looking.

That was the first one we've ever seen out here. But.... I know how that goes. We've seen just the one. I know deep in my heart that there must be thousands of them out there on the property and they just haven't found their way to our porch yet. Oh goodie. Something else to worry about.