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sign of opening through which ha could squeeze himself, and then Tom and I 
went mantis hunting. Eain was falling heavily, and had been almost from the 
time we had hit bottom, but visibility was good, and we felt very snug 
walking about with a fine roof of water ten feet up. 
Ihe area in which our mantis had built his house was covered with soarce 
'turtle grass, so we began oo the area, checking every sandy mound as 
far as our hoses would reach in a circle two hundred feet in diameter. There 
were lug worm mounds and other hillocks of sand with unkno\m inhabitants, 
but there were none that answered the description of the one built by our 
ma-ntis. Whenever one appeared even vaguely promising we scraped the top 
off or scooped the center out to learn if it was a roofed-over hole. No 
luck at all. And I had been confident that we would find several. After 
two hours of vain searching we returned to home base. The mantis was digging 
again, and tossed out an armload of sand as we came up. We were glad to .know 
that he hadn*t escaped. 
In order to find out what this type of mantis eats wo put a smallish 
crab into the enclosure. It walked about — and the mantis paid no atten- 
tion to it. Yi/e had a spare orab claw, I smashed it to get some juice from 
it into the water, and put it near the mantis hole. No sale. The mantis 
began roofing over his doorway. We moved the crab claw closer and closer. 
Still no results. Finally I placed the claw squarely across the opening of 
the hole. The mantis roofed over the hole using the claw as part of the 
