“I Got Called Out by a Praying Mantis”

I thought getting a massage would relax me. You know, soft music, lavender air, my soul gently untangling itself from my spine.

Instead, I got a performance review… from a dead praying mantis.

Somewhere between “wow, my shoulders are made of concrete” and “I might actually drool on this table,” I slipped into that floaty, in-between place. The place where thoughts get weird and the veil gets thin and apparently; customer feedback is delivered.

And there he was.

My mantis.

Except not peaceful. Not glowing. Not floating in some serene, enlightened bug afterlife.

No.

He was ready.

His little body angled forward, those iconic arms lifted, twitching, circling, gesturing like he was about to throw hands or cook a five-course Italian meal while scolding me.

If a praying mantis could say “listen here” with its entire body, this was that.

“Heyyyy buddy,” I thought, cautiously.

He started moving his arms faster. Sharp. Emphatic. Each motion punctuating his words like an Italian grandmother mid-rant.

“I’m mad at you.”

The hands kept going. Oh, the hands were talking.

“You kept me in a cage my whole life,” he said, slicing the air with those tiny green arms like he was underlining every syllable.

Now listen, I did not expect to be spiritually confronted by an animated, slightly aggressive ghost bug while half-naked under a blanket, but here we were.

“It was a really nice cage,” I offered internally. “You had sticks. And leaves. And… ambiance.”

The arms paused.

Slow turn of the head.

Then back to the gestures, faster now. Louder, somehow.

“No bugs want to be in captivity.”

He wasn’t yelling exactly, but his entire body was. Passionate. Expressive. A full-body TED Talk.

“You meant well,” he added, softening just a fraction, though the hands were still doing a lot. “But I didn’t get to live the life I was meant to. We want to be free. To live. To love. To have babies.”

I blinked in my mind.

Because somehow, in all my years of being a human, it had never occurred to me that my mantis might have dreams. Aspirations. A tiny insect soulmate somewhere whispering, “Where is he?”

Meanwhile, he was in my house, eating pre-delivered snacks and living what I had confidently labeled “a great life.”

The audacity.

And yet… also, the truth.

There I was, face down in a massage cradle, being gently kneaded while simultaneously being spiritually humbled by a six-legged philosopher with the energy of a disappointed Italian elder.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

And I meant it.

Because underneath the absurdity, there was something real. A reminder wrapped in six legs and a whole lot of hand gestures.

Love doesn’t always mean possession.Care doesn’t always mean control.And sometimes, even the smallest beings have something big to teach.

He seemed satisfied with that.

The energy softened. The lecture ended. The mantis, having delivered his message, clocked out of the spirit realm like, “My work here is done.”

And just like that, I was back in my body.

Same massage. Same music.

But now carrying the distinct awareness that I had just been passionately lectured… by a bug.

A wise one.

A slightly dramatic one.

But a wise one nonetheless.