Hotel Critters

We have one daughter in particular who loves to capture "critters."  (and she's quite good at it...very little gets away from her!)  Our "Butterfly Garden" has been home to many in the last 5 months.  Here is a sampling...

This guys was quite impressive at about 5" long!

Our master catcher!

The kids loved collecting these cool "African Shells" around the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, sometimes they would come back and not find them where they left them.  (aka notice the "shell" crawling up the wall!)

We have these cool "push up" lizards all over the yard.  They love to sunbathe on top of our wall.  We call them push up lizards because...well...they spend all day doing push ups!

One of the things I've been amazed at is that none of the birds here sound anything like the birds in the States.  While bird calls go seemingly unnoticed by me in the U.S., here many of them draw my attention because they sound so different.  There is a certain bird that visits the bush just outside our bedroom window every morning around 6:30.  His call is quite distinct and well...LOUD!  We hear him every morning but had never been able to see him until recently.  Toby ran into our room and said quite matter of factly, "Mommy, I saw a parrot with a big orange beak."  Ummm...ok.  It wasn't until later that we saw what he had seen...AND discovered the culprit of our morning wake up calls.  (this picture isn't great as it was taken with a zoom lens through our screen -- but again, good enough for documenting!)

On our walk to the roadside, we saw this little guy on the side of the road -- appeared to be just a couple hours old.

We've enjoyed watching the numerous baby goats born right outside our gate.  There is always a mommy goat with a swollen abdomen that my heart goes out to.  There are new little ones born almost weekly.  Because these goats are part of our trash control system (another post on this coming), our gate is a favorite place for them to hang out...

Every afternoon around 4pm, these guys get a little frisky.  We enjoy sitting outside and watching them play "king-of-the-hill" on the numerous gigantic dirt piles on the street.  

I think this particular "catch" made me laugh the most.  I came out to find this little guy...in the butterfly house...on the dining table squawking his displeasure.  Within minutes of this video, he earned his name as "Poopy", was quickly returned to his momma outside, and my kids got to spray out their "critter" house for their next resident!  Not sure they will try that one again!