At first, I thought it was a small grasshopper since I was moving through very tall, dense grass, but it didn't move like one. When I bent down for a closer look I saw the mantid body but very pointed eyes compared to the european species with which I was familiar. Since it was so small, not even an inch, I wondered if it might be a ground Litaneutria minor (Scudder) which I read about in Bagging Big Bugs p 59 by Cranshaw and Kondratieff.