Prawns in the Grass

I'm thrilled to have found my very first parktown prawn :) I found it far away from Parktown. It was on the edge of a golf course in Magaliesberg. I think it might be the 2nd most interesting insect I have ever found. Second only to butterflies because butterflies are the most beautiful creatures in the universe.





I don't think these pictures do them justice. They are beautiful and the fact that they are indigenous to South Africa makes them even cooler.

I sat for a while and watched this one. Took about a hundred photos -none were very good coz I used my 2 megapixel cellphone camera and i'm not much of a photographer to begin with.

It wasn't doing much, so I took a stick and started poking at it. No, I'm not like a horrible 4 year old child who pulls cats by their tails, it has an exoskeleton and I wasn't hurting it at all.

I left it and when I came back to check later it was still lying there, but it's body was being eaten by ants.

So I guess it hadn't moved earlier coz it had been dead the whole time. Which is sad for this beautiful little cricket, well beautiful large King cricket, but lucky for me, coz apparently they bite quite hard if u come too close.

It was my first encounter with a Parktown prawn and I hope for my sake that it was pesticide in the grass and not my stick poking that killed it.