Wild Life

One of the things I really like about living in Florida is all the nature. I know I've mentioned a little bit before about the different creatures we have living around our apartment complex, but I am still consistently surprised at how many crawling, creeping things I run across when ever we've outdoors--not literally of course, although the amount of dead armadillos I've seen out here have shattered my apparent (mis)conception that they only live in Texas. A few weekends ago we participated in a small service project with our church at a woman's shelter that was kind of off the beaten path. After splitting up into groups, our group was assigned to clean out and organize and bunch of outdoor sheds. Opening the doors of the first one revealed a practice menagerie of insects and reptiles. I saw tiny frogs, huge carpenter ants, a six-inch lizard, and lots of little half-inch lizards. The floor was covered in dirt and white ant eggs, which understandably grossed everyone out, but I bravely volunteered to sweep it out. It gave me that feeling that something was crawling on my skin, but I sucked it up for charity's sake. While I was in there the large lizard attacked and slowly ate one of the small ones. It was like the Discovery Channel, except inside of a shed. I wish I had a camera with me so I could gross you all out. I do have some awesome turtle shots, which I don't mind sharing. Not quite as scary but still neat.

P.S. when I first took these photos I thought it was cool that such animals lived in the pond next to our apartment. We've since met a couple from our ward that has two baby alligators that live in the pond by their apartment complex. They feed them bread, and I am excited to see them. Even though my Dad likes to lecture me about staying away from ponds because he thinks I will fall in and get eaten. Not like I ever fell into ponds or anything similarly clumsy as a child....