Animal Kingdom

This afternoon, Kami spotted a katydid on the screen door. We were all delighted with this leafy looking creature (that Ellie named Leif and that she said must certainly be "a cousin of the grasshopper and cricket"), so we captured it and put it in a jar for observation. But this was not to be the high point of our day. Around 5:30 PM, Ellie ran in the door and screamed, "Mom, there's a MOLE in our yard!" So, I dashed outside, expecting him to have scampered back into his hole, but there he was, big teeth, long claws, almost invisible eyes, just digging away. My first impulse was to crush him, as these little critters create all kinds of dirt sculptures in our yard and eat our flowers! But I managed to scrape him into Luke's plastic wheelbarrow and then into this box. (you can see the bloody nose we gave him.) Papa took him away for us. He said that he'd let him go someplace. I wish this pretty gross critter (that Ellie named Dirty), was THE neigborhood mole, but I have a feeling he's got a huge extended family under our house! EEK!