This evening as I was taking out some trash, I noticed what looked like a piece of old ivy vine stuck on the side of the garage so I reached for it AND IT MOVED. It was an honest to goodness stick insect. Here are two pictures of it. I had never met one before.
Neat! Critters turn up in the oddest places sometimes.
We had one on the outside of our car; it hitched a ride at 60 mph and home again. I guess they could be called sticky sticks…*; )
One cool thing it did when I picked it off the wall (and dropped it when it moved! Eek!) was that it folded its legs in and totally looked just like a twig. Amazing! Then I ran upstairs to get my phone and took the pictures. I didn’t know those even existed in North America. I thought they were Amazonian or something like that. That’s why I was so amazed, aside from just the coolness factor. And it was a friendly little thing, walking along calmly on my arm as I moved it over to some ivy.
The difference in walking sticks and the mantis is that the sticks eat plants and the mantes group eat prey.