Cool Critters

Check out this cool snail. We have several of these around outside, but I rarely see them "on the move" like this guy. Course, he was so slow I had plenty of time to find a shilling, which is about the size of a quarter, for your frame of reference.

 "cheeeeese!"

Last Saturday, we woke up late, ate some pancakes, watched NatGeo Wild, and then Hunter goes, "Yosh, I have a surprise for you...I'm not sure if you're gonna like it." Uh-oh!

THIS was the surprise:

Yup. That's a real live tarantula that Hunter saw crawling on our living room wall after I had gone to bed. 

So naturally, we decided to step outside our apartment in Africa and have our own NatGeo Wild episode. Beginning with this brilliant little gimmick.

We didn't get it on tape, but after a few minutes, the bee got in the tarantula's way. It might have stung him, I'm not sure. And the tarantula grabbed the bee and shoved it in his mouth. It was crazy!

Then, Hunter found this cool beetle in a tree.

It's a scarabaeidae beetle, (or cetonia aurata?). Hunter said in the Philippines, he saw a kid flying one of these like a kite.

So we tried it out.

In this next video, notice how the monkeys are curiously watching what on earth we are doing. When we walked it out to the parking lot, a bird flying overhead was hovering to see if he could get a bite, and when the beetle landed on the ground, a lizard kept creeping in close for his share. Poor beetle. We released him later. Hopefully we didn't mess with nature too much and he's still alive, although, he probably is still wearing a little peace of string that we couldn't remove very well. Whoops.

Sweet, eh? Fun little bug adventure morning.