Why are artificial trees better, “pray” tell?

I hate to say I told you so, but I did.

OK, I totally lied — I don’t hate to say it.

I’ve come out before in favor of artificial Christmas trees over real ones.  In fact, I blogged about that just a few weeks ago.  https://www.959theriver.com/the-turquoise-treaty/   Now as you can see from that post, I do have a real tree these days since I believe in the “happy wife, happy life” philosophy.  But for my money, artificial trees are the way to go.  Besides many other benefits, you only have to decide on a tree about once every 10 years!

But anyway, until I heard about this — https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/praying-mantis-infestation-christmas-tree_us_5c362864e4b070b69ae029ba — I didn’t know the really good reason for going artificial!  A woman in Virginia didn’t notice the nest of praying mantis eggs that was hiding in the tree she brought home.  Then they hatched.  And her house was infested with more than a hundred of these not-so-little buggers!  Now there’s a way to put a damper on Christmas.

Now to be fair, if you’ve got bugs in your basement, you could accidentally bring those up with the artificial tree box.  But if you’re keeping your place exterminated, you’re probably going to be OK.  But bringing in flora from the outside, I guess you never know what kind of fauna you’ll get as a bonus!

I know Christmas is a religious holiday for many, myself included, but I think I’d rather leave the praying to the humans.  I’d prefer not to have my mantle covered with mantises.