With Christmas quickly approaching, many individuals are bringing in freshly cut trees. It’s a pleasant ritual, but if you don’t know what to look for, it can have disastrous results. Erie County, Ohio officials advise that if you find a walnut-like growth on your tree, cut the part of the branch with the growth off and leave it outside in nature. As it turns out, Christmas trees can harbor hundreds of praying mantis eggs, which will hatch quickly inside a home on a Christmas tree!

The county uploaded a Facebook post in 2019, which went viral and is still visited each year around Christmas. They wrote in the post: “PSA: If you find a walnut-sized/shaped egg mass on your Christmas tree, don’t worry; just clip the branch and plant it in your garden.” This is a clutch of 100-200 preying mantis eggs! If you don’t bring them in, they’ll hatch and starve!”

Putting a praying mantis egg sack in your Christmas tree will not harm you or your home, but it will harm the baby insects that hatch. Of course, even though praying mantes are generally harmless to humans, I doubt anyone would want a few hundred of them released in their home. The true issue is with the bugs themselves. They will starve if they do not have access to the outdoors.

The problem only affects people who reside in areas where praying mantis can be found. They generally inhabit warmer climates in the United States, ranging from the Carolinas to Texas and even southern California. Don’t be alarmed if you notice a brown walnut-sized mass on your tree. Simply clip the place and put it outside for the eggs to hatch safely!