I dreamt that I was eating a praying mantis in a creamy yogurt sauce. Served in a large and deep bowl, it was eaten with chopsticks. I was not alone, but I do not remember the other person any longer. The insect was about three times larger than the largest one I have ever seen. It was the length of my hand. Its torso was about two fingers’ width. And it was still alive when I started eating it, but it was limp at first. Inadvertently, as the sauce was quite thick, I started by biting off its head. The size of a small chestnut, it was not very crunchy, and so I noticed it only when I picked the insect up for the second time. It was headless, but now it was fighting back quite fiercely. I can still feel its strong legs pulling and pushing haphazardly at my fingers, cheeks, lips. I remember laughing incredulously as I chewed through the legs and the upper part of the torso, which was not very crunchy, either. I kept marveling at the insect’s formidable muscles and commenting the experience to the person I was with, who just sat next to me and watched me eat. Wherever I was, whichever cuisine I was partaking in, I wondered about the experience as a whole. The dish was not about the mantis’ taste, as the creamy yogurt sauce was there mainly to render the huge insect manageable. The culinary trick was in its frantic fight.