Crawdad's, leeches and snails - A Father's Day Treat

Text and pictures © 2009 Mona E. Dunn

O.K. So my friend Kathy is getting tired of looking to see if I've posted anything new over the past year and seeing " A Good Day to Die". I've got to agree. It's time to change the subject.

So this Father's Day here is a tribute. We went down to return the creek to the newly excavated pond, closing off the head gate and opening the other to let the water flow to it's intended destination. Looking to see if indeed the water had stopped flowing through the shut down culvert, I noticed an excessive amount of squirming in the puddle. Looked a bit like those rolly polly bugs you see gardening. I asked Clark to see what he thought. He declared the squirming creatures to be crawdad fledglings.

We decided to go back to the house to get a bucket to fill and salvage what we could of the population. I brought up two buckets full and poured them into the pond. Determined to save as many lives as I could I resolved to go back for one more bucket, pick some of the prolific wild spinach to freeze and take pictures of the shoulder high grasses. Clark decided to join me and we followed the creek to the fence. We found several adults, the females loaded with eggs, raccoon tracks, leaches, tiny black snails, and large green frogs.

Clark thought it was the perfect Father's Day! So we had a beer to celebrate and hope all of you fathers had a great event as well.

Pictures will be added once I get my new external memory for the computer as I dare not add any more to my maxed out space.