Not for the squeamish

We have a pair of cardinals, a blue jay, some finches and a woodpecker that frequent our yard. Here is a picture (a bad one through the dirty kitchen window) of our two little cardinals. They have been molting and are looking rather ratty.

We love our birds but we have also been invaded by bugs and all kinds of little creatures. I am ready for the temperatures to cool down so all the little creepy crawly things will go away! Here is a praying mantis that was hanging out by our front door.


Camouflage.
Fisher loved this guy.

I thought we had a crack on our garage door only to discover that it was two of those giant bugs mating.

I was walking outside minding my own business when I saw this guy on the side of the house. Normal enough looking bug....

Until you notice the antennas that are about the three times the size of his body.

One morning after it had been raining all day I looked up at the window to see a fat slug. Gross.

This one really freaked me out. I looked outside the back window and saw this gigantic spider on our deck. When I went out to get pictures it started to swing the web back and forth and I thought it was going to jump off and attack me. It gave me the total heebie jeebies and it did not make me feel any better when I saw how bright the colors were or the large size of the fangs. I went inside and googled yellow and black spider thinking I had some huge, man-eating, poisonous spider living right outside our door but it turns out it was a harmless garden spider aka a "banana" spider. I was not imagining the web movement and found out the female "can oscillate her web vigorously while she remains firmly attached in the center." Thanks Wikipedia! Thankfully she left soon after this picture.

As if all these other creatures weren't disgusting enough I happened to discover that our little friendly lizard who lives in our yard decided to make his way into Fisher's room. I discovered him while vacuuming. Freaked me out!! We think he must have gotten in when we were bringing in groceries the day before. I tried to catch him but he ran into Fisher's closet to hide.

Later on I had Fisher and his two friends try to find the lizard. This is the hazard of having little boys try to help...

That night Todd and Fisher shut Fisher's door and did a full on search for the lizard and caught him. Todd was opening his hand to show me when the lizard escaped again. This picture caught him jumping out of Todd's hands.

When Todd grabbed him the next time he accidentally ripped the tail off. Here he is holding lizard in one hand and tail in the other.

Things got really nasty after that because he accidentally dropped the tail in trying to keep hold of the lizard. While he went outside to release the beast the tail wriggled on the floor and made me feel like I was going to vomit. It is really gross because if you enlarge the picture you can see the inside of the tail where it broke off. Gag much anyone???

Thankfully the last few weeks have been better. Hopefully with the temperatures cooling all the creatures have retreated to their homes and away from ours.