Over 100 Praying Mantises Invade Woman's Home After Hatching From Christmas Tree

A brown egg case under a branch hatched and sent praying mantises all over a Virginia woman’s home

In today’s edition of “LOL, Absolutely Not,” a Virginia veterinarian found herself grappling with a final holiday surprise courtesy of the praying mantis infestation inside her Christmas tree.

Nightmare fodder. So much nightmare fodder.

Molly Kreuze told WJLA News that her tree’s final gift meant, “Bugs. Crawling on the walls, crawling on the ceilings. Just kind of moving.”

Sorry, but I’d be speeding away in a moving truck within minutes. Look at this shit. They can have the house.

A brown egg case under one of the tree’s branches hatched and sent the family of insects scrambling.

But apparently, Kreuze, obviously used to critters due to her line of work, is a lot less easily rattled and went about capturing the (I’m sorry, not sorry, terrifying) little creatures.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1081313901193711616

She’s currently feeding them fruit flies and hoping to give them to someone who wants them.

That’s right — apparently there’s a market for these creepy dudes. “In my googling, I discovered people really like praying mantises,” she says. “They are useful, they eat other bugs, people use them for organic gardening.”

“I hope to find them a home,” she says. “I don’t want them.”

Now she’s speaking my language.

Her efforts to save the little suckers are admirable, but I live up north and we’re currently under a foot of snow, so those guys would be inside my Dyson canister tout suite. Luckily, they were born to someone as compassionate and unfazed as Kreuze.

That said, she’s getting a fake tree next year — and not a single soul blames her.