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When I grew up we had grasshoppers in every lawn, always and everywhere. These days I hardly see or hear any.

Also anecdotal, but:

My parents would talk all the time about catching lightning bugs as kids. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I didn't see a single one. Now, the back yard is absolutely full of them (again, apparently.)

What the heck? I grew up in the same era, and lightning bugs were what you did late night out in the yard as a kid.

I’m in Japan and we have a ton of grasshoppers. I can’t step in the grass near my garden without seeing some jumping around. Mantis are tricky, really hard to see them but when you are so close they look at you like you don’t belong there. Creepy.

I have a special affinity for mantises. They have an almost otherworldly quality to them.

I'm also extremely grateful that they're smaller than us. A dog sized mantis would be the stuff of nightmares and horse sized mantises would pretty much have guaranteed our extinction long before now.

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