The Praying Mantis

I love getting down on my hands and knees to take pictures of the bugs I find around here as some of you might have seen my spider pictures a while back?
Anyway, my newest bug is the Praying Mantis. We've seen a few around but this guy was the largest I've ever seen and the fastest! I couldn't believe how quickly and how far he could jump when I got too close. He crossed the road faster then the kids could get to him which sucked because they were following him as I was trying to get a good look which just kept scaring him farther away until he started climbing up a tree out of reach. We also looked absolutely insane running after this bug, laying on the road trying to get a good look and screaming when he started jumping hoping he wasn't going to attack us.
The kids were super interested because of the movie Kung-Fu Panda. One of the characters main characters in the show is a Praying Mantis, and they acting as if they were meeting the actual movie character not letting it out of their sights but they couldn't understand why it kept bobbing back and forth because the guy in the movie does not do that.
Well, with his fast moves and constant bobbing he really made it a challenge to get a decent shot to share with you guys but here a few of our newest neighbor...