I've got a beef with the Praying Mantis. I don't find them cool looking. I think they are weird actually. They look weird and they act weird. And what's up with them always having to hang out on the front door?

Imagine this. You pull in the driveway from food shopping and you've got two armloads of groceries and your housekeys jabbing out of your hand. As you peer over the grocery bags to try and see the doorknob, what is perched on it but a friggin Praying Mantis?! So you stumble backward and land in the rhododendron bush, sending eggs, laundry detergent and frozen Eggos flying all over the lawn.

I see these things and I'm like "Dude! You don't live there. Can't you go chill in a tree or something? Don't you have peeps that are waiting for you in a cornfield someplace?" And the bastard just stares at you with that unwavering look of satisfaction, knowing that you can't get in the house until he moves. And he will sit there and watch you, cocking his head with your every movement as you flail your body around trying to shove yourself through the front window. He will also remain on the doorknob for three hours after that to ensure that you can't leave the house either. Because he is a bastard.

However, the real truth about the Praying Mantis is this. They are aliens. For real. Think about it. What does every artistic depiction of an alien you have ever seen look like? Remember the cover of the novel Communion? Remember the lifeforms in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs? Only two examples of many but you see where I am going. They all have the head of a Praying Mantis.

I'm not done. I have heard time and time again some sort of government enforced law that forbids us from killing them. Supposedly, they are dropped out of planes into crop fields to eat the "bad" bugs that kill the crops. Well why do they always land on doorknobs then? The last time I checked, my house was not in the middle of a cabbage patch. If we are not permitted to kill them - by the government - is there some sort of conspiracy going on? Are they hiding something from us?

Think about that intense little human-like stare. Scary, right? They are absorbing information like tiny sponges. Except they don't look like sponges, they look like scary little sticks with giant heads who are green and have beady eyes and like to hang out on doorknobs and make me spill my groceries. They are not being dropped out of planes - they are being dropped out of their Mother Ship to which they bring back all the information they collect.

So the next time you come home from Stop N Shop and Marshall the Mantis is relaxing on the front door, don't panic. Stand up to him! Take the frozen leg of lamb out of the bag and beat the crap out of him. Do it for all humankind! Hitchcock will be so proud of you.