My dad is a landscaper and he found one, one day back in my sophomore or junior year of high school and my brother was doing a school project of how many types of bugs he can catch and he got an A for the mantis. The thing was so cool looking. I never saw one before until that day. You have some really cool picture's of them. They're saw cool!
And I HATE Box Elders. Let's just say they'll be the death of me as long as I'm working at Spencer's! Seriously. They infest our backdoor like nothing, and our door chime will go off every ten to twenty minutes during the day because of them. And we freak because ether a.) someone is in our back room, and b.) some one is at the back door. I HATES THEM! The manager, and myself are afraid they'll set off the alarm during the night and we'll get a nice call from home office.