oh my gosh Linda! what a shock that must have been. That's a pretty fat mantis but so is the hummer... I'm still shocked that it would prey on something so big, although like you said, I have heard of the mantis eating hummers!!
and that is a pretty big lizzard too, with snake-like colors!
We do get some big snakes here, that second chicken snake that I saw in the coop was definitely at least six feet long! And now that you mention it, there are way less frogs at our pond this year. We've been talking about that but thought maybe it was because the fish or other birds were eating them. We recently burned a pile of wood that has been sitting since the spring; some kind of big snake came crawling out... it was pregnant.
