Larvae, Insects, Reptiles and Crustaceans

I can now say that I really know how my mom felt when her daughters would bring 'creatures' home and with me being like her and actually looking forward to these days its been quite exciting.


These tent caterpillars we found in Lewis Canyon but decided not to bring them home. I explained to the girls that they like to eat the leaves on just about anything so they ere content to save the ones that had somehow made it into the creek and then try to find the biggest ones around. I think we looked at literally 100's of caterpillars.

These Tiger Swallowtails were also all over Lewis Canyon. The girls almost had a couple land on them but that's the closest we got to bring any of them home plus we've had a few around here so no need to add more.

They were sure pretty though-literally all over the canyon.

She is so my daughter!!! Not that I had any doubts. Jessie was playing at the neighbors were they had found this snake. She not only identified it as a Bull Snake(not poisonous), she brought it home. I was so proud of her!!

She was quite proud of herself as well.

This was the second bullsnake found that week and this one was almost half the size of the other one-it was huge!

We let him go out back and wished him my gophers in his future.

Okay the next few photos are of a creature that the girls found, brought home and it is something that I had never seen or brought home myself-that SCARY!!!! I always managed to bring something home. Needless to say these little things had me stumped-what are they??!!

The girls were getting bored one afternoon so I sent them outback into the pasture that is behind the house to go catch some tadpoles. The whole meadow is flooded and there are a lot of frogs so I figured they should be able to find some tadpoles.

They were gone for a little over an hour. When they some back, they looked like they had become one with the mud but with huge smiles on their faces and a Tupperware container filled with muddy water and these creatures of the 'deep'.

I have to admit that when Marisa first picked up one of her 'catches', I wanted to knock it out of her hand. It looks like something that would bite you, or suck your blood or...............some sort of parasite. After I got control of my almost out of control emotions, I thought well, maybe they are baby crawdads, some sort of leach or they look a lot like a miniature horseshoe crab but we don't have those around here. I was determined to figure out what they were!! I spent an hour on the Internet trying to find these disturbing creatures.

In the meantime, the girls had fun holding them. They have 'legs' that look like feathers and they move really fast.

This is the underside of one-its a bit muddy and yes, I have a glove on. After an hour of research, I finally found them. It put my mind at ease until I read that they ate mosquito larvae and then I was stressed that they were all going to die and then we would have that many more mosquitoes and then I would lose that much more blood and then...........we needed to let them go!!!

What are they? Oh yeah-they are called "Tadpole Shrimp" and are a type of freshwater crustacean that don't get much bigger than your finger, they live in ponds(or flooded meadows) were mosquitoes flourish and are completely harmless.

Unfortunately, we were not able to release all of them that they had brought home-there was a bunch of them too, but due to their sensitive nature most of them had died.

Well thats all for now but more summer fun to come!!!