Current Events > Machete writes a few paragraphs for you :P

(+) Yeah! (+)

"There once was a time when I heard a subtle and initially indecipherable sound in a shared kitchen of an apartment building I lived in at the time.

I want to preface this by spoiling it. The sound was a praying mantis. Somehow, It had become trapped in the kitchen window, probably at least partially because the window plants. They would have... made it a bit inconvenient to navigate, and we all know... insects are... well, basically as dumb as anything living on this planet gets... except maybe bacteria... other microscopic critters like that... besides them, insects are mentally at the bottom of the barrel as sentience is concerned... but they... insects... have survived already, more a mass extinction than we humans have. We are the apex predator... We have the apex mind... But insects have existed for millions of years before us and they will outlive us, probably by multiple mass extinctions... and in the insect world... the mantis... the mantis is... well, considered one of the most intelligent types of insect there is... and I say 'type' instead of 'species' because I don't want to speak too improperly. I know there are multiple species of mantis. I'm no entomologist. I'm just speaking from one experience...

On that subject... that one experience... I told you initially, spoiler alert. That sound in that kitchen was a mantis... and again, I'm no entomologist, but I'm going to respect a creature that is demonstrably exceptional to the majority of its counterparts, not to mention oddly beatiful... and she was... take a bit of time out to just think about it... what a physical oddity is the mantis? More importantly, how does a physical oddity achieve intellectual and evolutionary supremacy? I could rant for hours...

But I digress, she was a beauty... an exceptional specimen any collector would have dropped everything for, a once in a lifetime catch, a rarity in nature, pristine in condition and almost intimidating in size... well over half the length of my hand... and I wasn't sexualizing any of that by that way. You thought I was. I wasn't. A mantis that size isn't going to be a male...

But none of that is important. She wasn't getting out on her own and really, do I care? I did care. I have a soft spot for certain insects... mantids included. Normally they aren't all that smart... but mantids supposedly are. I reach out my hand. I just want this one to crawl onto me so I can let her outside. Not surprisingly, there's a fight or flight response... but it was further than that... That's where it got profound. It wasn't a fight or flight response. It was a fight or flight? response. Normally, an insect will flip an instinct switch and go all in, even into death. Fight or flight. It will get the pick and then it will be over. This was not that. This mantis asked the question in her own mind and actually weighed out whether to go with fight or flight... and I found that very fascinating. She squared up against my thumb. She boxed my fingers. Even after she correctly surmised that I meant to help and not harm her, she could have been self-destructively foolish as most insects are and done... any number of eye-rolling things... but she stayed on my hand.

By some innert communication either most basic and primative or by some possibly psychic telepathy, the message had been transmitted. I'm going to assume there was... some fair medium there between... the silly spectrum ends... but the important thing to remember in all of this is that I was uncharacteristically patient and she was characteristically astute, and in the end, we had a sort of... unspoken understanding, like we both on that day... avoided a hubris...

Maybe I walked right into another one... but if I did... this is most predictable cliche imaginable and if not, you all missed it.. and I just really have way too much much anxiety..."

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You REALLY shouldn't have

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obeseexplosive posted...

You REALLY shouldn't have

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8e19xlb7mM

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