If I heard correctly, "God's horse," is how the Pulaar word for praying mantis, “poochu Allah,” translates to English. I think Connecticut has some law against killing praying mantises, because I remember one time when I was little and at the beach we found one walking underneath—and my memory is telling me it was underneath a surfboard, but people don’t go surfing in Long Island Sound so I don’t know what it was—something, and the adults said we weren’t allowed to kill it. Not that I wanted to kill it. And neither do Gambians, apparently. One evening a praying mantis landed on Amadou’s arm and he watched as it crawled around for a bit and didn’t try to swat it away or anything. And as the praying mantis walked and blinked, people started talking about it. Do conversations happen for other insects? No.
The strangest thing, though, about a praying mantis being God’s horse, is that praying mantises don’t even pray the same way that Muslims pray. So maybe I heard wrong and “poochu Allah” was referring to something else. Or maybe I’ve never watched a praying mantis closely enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment