small mantis

I went to cut back the stems of milkweed which has died off, and found a little preying mantis. Never expected to see a small one so close to end of season!

The striped pattern is my sweater cuff, that's how little this guy is.

It jumped down, crawled through the grass, clover and mock strawberry

Looked backwards at me! You can see its pupils- I didn't know they could look around the back of their head