Nature's Critters

Ever see an ant lion? I'd never even heard of them until this summer in the midwest. Duke spent part of his childhood in the midwest and knows all sorts of interesting facts, which the nomads absorb like sponges (and regurgitate mostly at opportune times). Well, the ant lion is a pretty nifty find...they make little funnels in the sand and wait for ants to come along and fall in...slippery sides of sand (say that fast 10x) make it difficult for the ant to get out, and the ant lion helps its meal get closer by flicking sand above it.

Ant lion in Pumpkin's hand

Pumpkin discovered an interesting fact (one that Duke didn't know)...ant lions can only move backward.

But life is not simply full of ant lions...[back story: we like to find local produce (eggs/milk mostly) when we travel...and while realmilk.org is helpful, simply asking tends to find us a source]...our local egg/milk provider gets a kick out of how interested the nomads are in her farm, and learned that we homeschool, so she excitedly calls us up one morning to let us know that she found swallowtail caterpillars in her garden, and were we interested in them? YES!!! We raced up to her place lickety-split and came back with new tenants for our Butterfly Pavilion (empty since the monarchs left).

And we have had two hatch out already!

Our first swallowtail butterfly

Our second swallowtail butterfly

And what do you know, the Black Swallowtail Butterfly is the state butterfly of Oklahoma!

Yet, the fun never stops around here where creepy-crawlies are concerned...Button discovered an unhatched cicada on the front porch early one morning!

Unfortunately, Button is death on anything walking on her, so I had the *lovely* pleasure of said cicada walking up my arm (Those are some spikey little legs! It felt like little needles in my skin with each step it took!). We had been finding all kinds of empty casings, but never a live one, so I don't know if it is common to find them live, or if we just had a rare opportunity. Either way, we tossed it into the Butterfly Pavilion and it hatched out!

Cicada holding onto its casing after emerging

Button is happy to play with the casing, but keep that cicada off of her! :D