Katy, the Houseguest

Last week I was tending to my roses - my very first rose garden to be exact. Taking off all of the dead leaves and deadheading the spent flowers, and giving them their last meal of the growing season. As I was pulling off a yellow leaf on the inside of the plant something next to my hand moved - not a little something but a rather large something.

Can you see what made me jump?

This is Katy ...... short for Katydid. She was picked off of that rosebush and placed inside one of the girls insect houses that hadn't ben used since last years mantis raid.

Katy stayed with us for 4 days - sleeping and eating in her pink, plastic monstrosity. I chose to hold on to her because in all of my life living in the Denver Metro Area I had never seen a katydid - or at least a True Katydid. I had to do some investigation on her and make sure that she wasn't the culprit that had been munching on my roses.

Lucky for her she is not known to be a "pest" as she is a predatory insect related to the cricket, is active only at night, will only eat leaves if other "food" is not found. And they tend to remain on the same bush or tree their entire life. I shouldn't say she was lucky, only because I can not kill anything. I would have had to drive her out to one of the agro fields and let her go.

So after 4 days of her visit to the humanoids world - oh yea, she was show and tell at our last class at the Botanical Gardens - we set her back out on the same rose that I found her on. She was nice enough to stick around for a bit to have her photo taken. The girls were really attached to this big, green bug.

I couldn't be prouder!