Throw Out Brown Thing on Your Christmas Tree in Indiana

If you are one of those households that pick out a real Christmas tree each year, you might want to check to make sure there isn't an "ornament" that you didn't put on the tree, because this thing could lead to some unwelcomed guests in your home this holiday season.

By now, you most likely already have your tree up in your home and decorated with lights, garland, and various ornaments. I'm sure it looks great. However, there could be something lurking in your tree that you might not want in your home. Now would be a good time to give that live Christmas tree an inspection.

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If you spot a walnut-sized, brown pine cone-shaped object in your tree, it's not something you want to keep. As it turns out, this brown thing attached to your Christmas tree is actually a praying mantis egg sack full of 100-200 insects ready to invade your home. A friend of mine shared a post on Facebook that has gone viral yet again of a guy in Cleavland who found one of these in his tree a couple of years ago.

What are your chances of finding one of these in your tree here in Indiana? According to Indiana Nature, there are two primary mantis species in Indiana: the native Carolina mantis and the exotic Chinese mantis. Most likely, you won't find one in your tree, however, the chance is still there to find these mantis eggs. Luckily these insects are harmless to us humans and serve a good purpose of killing off other insects that we don't want around.

That being said, after doing a little digging, I discovered that having these eggs on your tree inside your house could lead to some unwelcome guests. Perfect hatching environment as these eggs typically hatch outside in the spring, but these eggs could hatch inside your home because it's nice and warm. We are talking about hundreds of tiny praying mantis invading your house. I'm just assuming that you'd rather not have hundreds of praying mantis babies crawling all over your house this holiday season, so what you need to do is clip the part of the branch that the egg sack is on and toss it outside, away from the heat of your home.

7 Invasive Insects in Indiana You Should Kill Immediately If You See Them

In an effort to inform the public on the types of invasive species that are known to be found in their state, the USDA offers a "Pest Tracker" on their website, where you simply click the name of your state from the drop-down menu provided to see pictures of the different insects and weeds, along with descriptions of the type of plant life they target and the damage they can do if they're not dealt with.

KEEP READING: 40 Real Indiana Towns with Quirky, Weird, and Funny Names

Outside the major cities, the Hoosier state is full of tiny little towns you've probably passed through on your way to one of those cities. Most of them are likely 100 to 150 years old, or older, and have been around far longer than the large metropolitan areas such as Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Evansville. Typically, they were started by early settlers who found their way to the state and decided to make it home. Eventually, others would join them, and a community was formed. Over time, as the surrounding areas grew, most of them were folded into those areas and governed by the nearest city or county's governing body officially making them "unincorporated," meaning they did not have their own formally organized municipal government.

A scroll through Wikipedia's long list of unincorporated communities in Indiana shows several of them have names that by today's standards would be considered weird, quirky, or just downright right funny. These are my 40 favorities.