Thursday, August 02, 2007

Additional wildlife

First -- and I know you're all dying to know this -- that spider on yesterday's post is known as an "orb weaver." Pretty arachnid with a pretty name. Reminds me of the old song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright, but that's for another post.

In any case, this spider is most welcome to help us stem the tide of mosquitoes bound to come swarming after our record rains. Speaking of which, it rained again today.

At the plant where I work we keep a small weather station to measure rainfall, wind direction and speed, and so on. The rainfall during July was right at 20 inches, which is half of our average rainfall for an entire year. Such rain tends to bring out all sorts of creatures from the weeds and brush.

One example, seen this morning, was this little guy.


He was in what is normally a cow pasture, right beside our plant entrance road, gliding through the weeds.


How big was he? Well, he was smaller than his cousin who we found inside the plant last week. We called the local game wardens to come and safely collect this protected animal. The took him to a place where both he and the people in our plant won't come in contact with one another and he can live a normal life in the local wetlands. Here's the cousin I'm talking about:

(Note the webbed feet?)

Anyway, it's not these little guys we're really worried about, it's their mother who may be lurking deeper in those same weeds.

6 comments:

Peter said...

I think I'll settle for the spiders John.

kenju said...

Yep, as much as I don't like spiders, they are certainly preferable to THAT!!

There are some parts of NC that are down 13" of rain this year.

Badabing said...

kinda scary...do you have those guys on the golf courses down there?

Anonymous said...

Eeewwww. I don't think I would like those kind of creatures swimming around in my back yard. When I lived on the creek and it flooded, the only creatures swimming in my back yard were ducks. Much better.

Candace said...

G-g-g-gahhhhh! InSIDE the plant?

Anonymous said...

Wow! At least it was like you said "a little guy" and not one of the big ones.

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