Category: Animals

I named her Medusa because of the moss (though not as long as writhing snakes) growing all over her shell.  She was like a moving moss ball.

But then, a few days after my Trapdoor Snail came to live with us I noticed that she was losing her “hair”.  I also saw the snails,shrimp and fish having breakfast, lunch and dinner on her back.

Now Medusa only has some small tufts of moss growing her shell.  It didn’t take long for the other animals in the tank to give her a good hair cut.

I have since learned that the moss was able to grow on Medusa’s shell because she was in a tank with only trapdoor snails the same size as she was.  It grew only because there was no one to eat it off of her.

Because the hens know when I feed Minnie on the back porch they are always there waiting to get something to eat too.

And I always have something for them. Today it was potato chips.

In the past I’ve crunched the chips up into small pieces.  This time I just threw the whole chip out and watched as the hens broke them up and ate them.

While White hen didn’t seem to know what to do.  Brown Hen was very quick and efficient about breaking up the chips and gobbling down the pieces.

Our new Bamboo shrimp are some of the bigger animals in our fish tank.  They’re well camouflaged as they hang upside down under the leaves of the plants in the tank.  But when they come out to eat they’re fascinating to watch.

They don’t scrape algae off the rocks and walls of the tanks like the snails, and other shrimp do.  They just hold out their conical shaped hands and pull the algae out of the water.

You can see this shrimp holding out his hands then, one by one,  bringing them to his mouth.

It was impossible to miss the bright orange marks spraypainted on the trees.  I was walking in my neighbor’s woods and knew these were the trees, all dead, he’ll be cutting for this winter’s firewood.

I know one of these trees very well.  It has some kind of fungus growing above a round hole in the tree. It always seemed to me a lovely entryway for some small animals home.

I’ve taken pictures of it before, but wanted to look at it again before it got cut down.

The hole is just about my eye level and as I walked up to the tree and looked inside, there was a big brown and black spider looking back at me.  It’s legs reached across from one side of the whole to the other which is about two or three inches round.

The spider must have been as startled as I was because she quickly turned and ran out of sight.  I’m guessing it was a wolf spider from the size and color.

I stayed just long enough to take a picture, then told the spider she’d best be moving on.  Soon her home would be firewood.

Yesterday Jon put up a picture of me and Lulu and Fate in the barnyard.

When I took this picture of Jon and Fanny and Zinnia, I thought, we each have a donkey and a dog. Fanny will always go to Jon and Lulu always comes to me.  Fate chases the sheep and Zinnia chases the ball.

Both donkeys and dogs will go to either me or Jon if the other person isn’t there.  But their choice is obvious.