Wildlife

Today, while out on a short bike ride, I suddenly saw a BLACK squirrel! I slowed down as I approached the tree he was climbing and took out my phone to take a picture. As soon as I got off my bike and started looking up the tree, he had vanished. I didn't hear the smallest rustle nor see the faintest hint of a black squirrel tail. I spent a good two or three minutes looking around for him, but gave up. So, unfortunately you do not get to see the awesome black squirrel I saw today (although you can see what he sort of looked liked here, but he was a bit fatter, more like this one.)

This reminded me that I had not uploaded the pictures of the giant snapping (maybe?) turtle I rescued! Here he is:

He may not have actually needed rescuing, but I did him the honor anyways. I was driving off after volunteering with the historical society, when I saw this guy crossing the road! You can see by comparison to the cigarette butt, he was not small cookie, and he was just strolling along in the middle of the oncoming lane. I pulled over, fearing his untimely demise by someone texting whilst driving (tsk tsk!) Unfortunately, another person had seen him as well, and he stopped in the middle of the lane, waiting for the turtle to "cross". What a dummy, as soon as the car was there he stopped walking entirely because the car was all loud and giant. Seeing that the other driver was just going to wait around all day, I scurried across traffic and picked him up by his very rear shell area so as not to get snapped. I ran him across to the sidewalk, and he had to sit through a short photo op (which he was clearly unhappy about...) I wish I had gotten a photo of his tail, however, it was huge and I got a Jurassic Park feel just by looking at it!

Aside from this turtle incident, there have been many turtles wandering around the campground and I have had to move several tiny (as in the size of a quarter) ones off of the mini golf course and into the safety of the trees (only after they had suffered the wrath of my leaf blower, however...) A boy came to show me a turtle he found the other day as well, but unfortunately it was a dead baby painted turtle, it's shell still soft from recently hatching.

Moving away from reptiles, we have a bit of a frog problem at the campground swimming pool. Yesterday morning Kathie (one of the owners) scooped out 10 little green frogs from the pool, and I later removed another 7 (6 still breathing) from the pool skimmers. It was the same story this morning too, I guess they like the warm water at night. They say the chlorine will kill them, and unless they get to the steps they can't get out, so we can safely say that we save lives every day :)

At any rate, all kinds of fun critters up here! Hopefully Kansas will offer more of the same.