Itty bitty preying mantis

Two weekends I found a very small preying mantis on my hat while we were cutting down the big arborvitae in our front yard; I almost brought it inside when we came in for lunch. (More on the tree we cut down in a future post.)

Much to my delight, after I took the insect back outside it stuck around long enough for us to eat lunch and come back out with the camera to take a photo. We've seen a couple other preying mantises down here, but this little one was much greener and much cuter than the other ones we'd seen before.