Ruth considered this, putting her head at an angle. “What about the scientists?” This had occurred to me, and so I was proud of Ruth for thinking to ask it. “Sometimes they let entomologists look at them, because they like to have pictures of themselves drawn, and they like to be given food. But if they don’t like it, and someone bothers them, they kill them.” “Really?” I took the mantis back from Ruth, and I set it on the flat back of my hand, the sheen of its body on my own skin. “They climb on people’s faces while they sleep, and they put a spell on their nose and their mouth, so they die.”
