Mrs. Snapping Turtle

Remember when I told you about our fun visitors, one being Mr. Snapping Turtle? I stand corrected. It was Mrs. Snapping Turtle.

Unfortunately, when we were weeding our garden and planting some flowers last night, we found the eggs (these are not actual eggs found).















Shane thought they were styrofoam balls .. almost look like ping pong balls. I said, "maybe they are eggs", right as Shane was cutting one in half because he thought it was styrofoam. And he said, "yep. It's an egg." We (I) almost cried. So we buried them all back. Then, when looking online to see if they really were snapping turtle eggs, we found out they were. And found out another sad tid bit. The eggs cannot be rotated, or the embryos die. :-( We have no idea how many were in there or how many rotated, but we feel so bad. I cannot stop thinking about it.

The baby turtles have a long waddle back to the ponds too, and from this site, it says they still stand a tough journey back.

Praying that all the eggs were rotated back to normal and that all the baby turtles make it to the ponds safely.

Fun Visitors!

We've been getting quite the visitors at our new house:


Mr. Snapping Turtle


Miss Humming Bird


So . . .this was from June maybe? And I had to brighten the picture up so you could actually see, but all those yellow dots are lightning bugs! The one night we looked out and it was like a Christmas light show. They were all up and down our back yard. It was crazy. Must have been mating night.


Lots of finches! We've had other birds too, but these are the prettiest!


Lots of hummingbirds! They are the coolest birds ever! (Ignore the nastiness at the top of the feeder. I finally found a bottle cleaner long enough from Wild Birds Unlimited so it's clean now.)


And we actually got another feeder that they can sit on (so they don't have to flap their little wings like crazy when they eat). It's so neat to see them just sitting. Will have to take some pictures of that too.

Some things we've learned about hummingbirds:
1) they are so pretty
2) they are soooooo tiny
3) they have this cute little chirp they do
4) they will actually get really close to you. they want their food. (we might attempt feeding from our hands one day.)
5) when they fly close to you, their wings flapping is such a loud buzzing noise
6) they are very territorial. if one hummingbird is feeding, another will come and chase it away.
7) don't use red food dye (it doesn't matter. clear attracts fine. and supposedly the red dye might cause brain tumors in them).
8) you don't have to boil your mixture (4 parts water, 1 part sugar)
9) they aren't as expensive to feed as the other birds, but i have to clean their feeders every week (at least). it's pretty nasty.
10) they are afraid of bumble bees (a bumble bee was challenging a humming bird to the feeder. bumble bee won.)

Hope you enjoyed meeting all our visitors too!

it must be something in the air. . .

ok. . . . so everyone knows how great my work place is, but it's even better when gi-normous spiders and prehistoric turtles lurk around . . .

check out this nasty spider that was blocking the entrance to the front door:
p.s. --> you have to click on the image to enlarge it, b/c these small pics just don't do it justice


then today . . when i pulled into the parking lot i was greeted with this "little" thing:



and although the nails on this thing are bigger than my head, it does have a cute little waddle:

stay tuned for more animals from the jurassic period . . .

p.p.s. --> everyone makes fun of me for carrying around my camera EVERYWHERE i go . . but i wouldn't have gotten these sweet pics & video to show you