A Wiggling, Crawling, Buzzing, Slithering Morning…
Today has been an interesting day already, and I thought I’d share a few things with you.
Ms. Awesomesauce, The Digital Kid, The Coppertop, and I all got up at five thirty this morning, knowing some chores needed starting, and they were best done in the cooler part of the day. (Adventure Girl was away, staying the night at a friend’s place.) The little one and Ms. A started clipping some of the shrubberies around the house, while I and our other son started organizing the garage. I offered to trade tasks, but she wasn’t interested in the garage at all, not with all the spiders we’ve been finding around here, lately.
Lo and behold, she was right! Spiders galore! Mostly wolf spiders, and a variety of garden spiders, and even a brown recluse or two had taken up residence in our messy garage. I was in for a bit of a shock, however, when I picked up a bag of clothing only to see the monster pictured here. Easily the biggest wolf spider I’ve seen in my entire life, with a leg span over four inches across, and a body nearly an inch long. He looked vicious, and even threatened me a couple times.
Shhh… don’t tell Ms. Awesomesauce, but we released the big fellow back into the garage. Hopefully he’ll clean up some of the less savory creatures crawling around in there.
It wasn’t ten minutes after we let the spider go (to be fair, it “escaped”, but neither The Digital Kid nor I made any attempt to stop it), when The Coppertop came into the garage with a tiny praying mantis. Now, I’m used to the big, pale green and dirt brown ones you see out in Arizona, but this one was tiny and bright green – almost neon! It was both a climber and a jumper, and used our redhead child like a jungle gym for a little bit before he let it go. I snapped a couple pictures, but they were too blurry, sadly.
The next find was the most vicious looking moth ever. With it’s wings spread, it looked to be nearly five inches across, and it was colored like a badger! Well, sort of. Being huge fans of the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender, (where you often see two creatures melded into hybrid forms) we quickly decided it must be something of a cross between the two species and named it a “modger”. I got a couple good shots of it, too. In the one here, you can see how fast its wings were moving.
As I got close, it flexed its wings and launched itself away, over the fence and around the corner of a neighbors house… followed closely by a hungry looking robin.
Poor fellow.
At least the robin had a good meal. Too bad PETA couldn’t convince the bird to become a vegetarian.
So. Spiders… bugs… what other creepy-crawlies could we find today?
How about a snake?
Cute little slithery slider, huh?
This one showed up while The Digital Kid was raking away some holly leaves in the front yard. We pounced on the unsuspecting little reptile and it spent the next fifteen minutes or so enjoying the warmth of my hands. For the most part, it didn’t move much, just stretched out and curled its body around my fingers. It tried to get away twice, but I gently held onto it until our oldest could get some grass and leaves into an aquarium so we could keep the snake around until Adventure Girl got home.
She’s home now, and I’ll be turning the legless wonder loose as soon as I’m done with this post.
… which is right about now.
