by G.W. Cox
My old man brought home a gift from Texas or Arizona. It beat the customary stick of Wrigley's Spearmint from his suit coat pocket. It was live. It was a praying mantis.
I named it Clawd. I watched him for hours. His spiky caliper arms swayed at guard like a sparring boxer. Behind them, his head gyrated, incessantly seeking prey. In tender moments his claws would snap onto my fingertip.
Unlike other insect pets, Clawd ate heartily. His favorite meal was grasshopper. Fine with me, coming home from school most days with grasshopper tobacco juice on my fingers.
Clawd would freeze curious with the grasshopper I'd caught. Then, fwat, he'd grab it at the top of the thorax and in the middle of the abdomen. His little mouth would gouge great chunks from the back, chomping away like me with corn on the cob. The grasshopper would struggle with half its back gone in an open brown wound.
Clawd lived in a sturdy shoebox in the basement. For his view and ventilation, I cut out parts of the box and replaced them with screen. For his exercise, I caught flies and let him flail away at them.
One day in late summer, Clawd refused to move. I nudged his arms and his whole body was stiff like a twig. I dropped to my knees for a closer look. His abdomen was flat as a small elm leaf. I moved some of the dead grass and saw an oval gray blob. Clawd had died from shitting his guts out.
I buried him in a velvet jeweler's box with a satin interior. I tied a cross with twine and two sticks. I stuck it in the ground where the lawn mower couldn't reach. His cage with the blob was chucked into the trash.
Years later I read a text with the facts of life for praying mantises. The female eats her mate during or just after making love. Months later the female lays the egg pod and dies. I stared at the close-up photo of the egg pod. It looked familiar. I should have named Clawd Clawdette.
I find solace knowing that in a dump warmed by the city's decomposing garbage, thousands of Clawdette's descendants roam free, hundreds of miles from their natural habitat. Eating a cornucopia of bugs. Breeding and dying with smiles on their faces, their arms clutched in eternal prayer.
G.W. Cox and his wife live in a muddle in New Mexico. After a career in newspaper work, he reads and writes fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous publications. He got an honorary mention in the Writer's Digest 2002 contest, personal essay category.