Aww! Praying mantises are totally harmless (to humans) and eat far more annoying bugs. I give the same pass to most spiders (for eating flies and mosquitoes), mud daubers (ironically for eating spiders), and house centipedes (for eating cockroach eggs).

Flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and bitey centipedes can fuck off and die though.

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I do the same, but they have to keep themselves away from my cats for it to work properly.

[–] Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, our only remaining cat is too old to chase anything anymore, but he definitely killed a few centipedes and cockroaches in his time. Good and bad.