visitor begets visitors, we hope

the other day, we had a visitor on our front door - a praying mantis, about 4"-5" long, creeping along in what i thought was HIS little halting mantis-walk. sadly, we were rushing out of the house to head to hanauma bay, and i did not stop for a photo.

but, our little mantis friend left us something better than a photo - SHE left us a nice little egg case full of growing nymphs we hope to see hatch:
now, supposedly it can take a few months for these to hatch in the mainland, but i have no idea how long it should take here. but i knew that even if it was only in a few days, this little brood of baby mantis(es?) was perched right where caleb likes to spend his mornings gazing out to watch the big outside, and i SERIOUSLY DID NOT want it to become a caleb chew toy or worse, snack. so, i had to improvise a little protection for both parties involved.thanks to some cheap, throw-away containers a some wire, we now have a perfect little viewing window to keep our eyes, but no mouths, on our new little friends.