Neighborhood praying mantises

Last summer me and my friend found a praying mantis. We saw it eat giant bees and butterflies. The last time that we saw it was in the late fall. A few days later we found an egg casing in a bush. We waited all winter for the egg casing to hatch. I checked on the praying mantis egg casing in the early summer and I found that it hatched. I saw lots of little praying mantises coming out of the egg case. They were very aggressive to one another. They had their tails up and their front claws were striking.

We kept two in a butterfly container and watched them grow. I made a bug sucker out of a straw, a plastic bottle and gauze. I caught flies and other insects, and fed them to the praying mantis. When they came out of their shedding skin they were brown, and then they turned light green, then darker green.