Menagerie Monday: More Mantis (and Mum) Mugs

Events are causing our government here to take extreme and sudden measures to try to slow the spread of the pandemic. Although we here in New Zealand have been—so far—extremely fortunate with the disease’s progress, compared to many other parts of the world, we have had 102 confirmed cases (as of 2:30 this afternoon), and our Prime Minister has escalated our status to Level 3, and decreed that it will go to Level 4 (Lockdown) in 48 hours, very probably for at least 4 weeks: a very scary prospect.
As life as we know it suddenly goes crazy, however, life in the garden goes on as usual. Yesterday morning I removed a net that was protecting our black Doris plums from the fruit-loving birds that frequent our small orchard and, as I was rolling it up for storage,  I found that this 1.5-inch long immature female mantis (Miomantis caffra) had chosen to stay with the net rather than on the tree. I had just brought home a bouquet of what we think are chrysanthemums, and their centers matched the mantis’s color so well that I thought they would nicely complement each other. I hope you agree! (Click to enlarge.)
In this time of frightening stress and uncertainty, may we all be kind to one another, support each other, settle down and embrace all the protective restrictions, and pray for rapid medical and infrastructural progress and for wise decisions by all of our leaders.