Helaman's Camp

The Buckeye Stake did the Senior Aaronic trip up on the rim north of Payson. These are some of my findings:

Jayden, I am sorry I did not save this bug for your collection, he would have been awesome.

I have not seen a tadpole this big in a long time. I caught him in Fossil Creek.

This grasshopper was laying her eggs right in the trail. The camera was about one inch from her and she just kept on laying...

We caught two horny toads and a common "Bernard" lizard. I put the lizard on my shoulder and he stayed there for over 4 miles of hiking and never jumped off. We let him go in camp.

This caterpillar is now in a cocoon in our horny toad cage.

Provocation of the Skink

Here is the initial provocation of a skink we encountered upon our path at Charlestowne Landing. This "Broaheaded Skink" was not friendly and could reach his neck around to bite unsuspecting victims (if you could call the aggressor a victim). His mouth is larger than any other lizard I have seen and his bite is stronger than any lizard except maybe a collared lizard.

This is a female Broadheaded Skink. Her bite was tame.
After I caught 3-4 skinks I got tired of washing my hands at Lindsay's insistence. I just took a picture of this one.

Cambria started looking for skinks too and spotted this one from atop a bridge. She was so excited. Lindsay is mad at me for teaching my girls to look for skinks.

Arizona Tree Frog

Jordan and I took the boys to Father's and Sons this last weekend to Rock Park near Flagstaff. We found a pond just down from the campground and the place was infested with little frogs. The boys must have caught about 30 of them.

Gage caught a "blue belly", he chased him all the way up a hill and wore the thing out to do it.

Sorry to out-do...

This one does out-do your little one Kimball (and the ducks), I'm sorry. But we found him a couple months ago by our back gate! It never jumped at my camera, thank goodness, but pretty cool looking. It probably could have eaten my camera!

this is the best we've got

This is so lame compared to the anole, Nathan! Since we've moved from the house literally surrounded by wildlife, I have to take pictures like this to post. Ducks. I guess the one exciting thing about this was that the brown one flew right smack into our back window while we were eating dinner, so we ran out side and found a mallard and a pretty white one. whoo hoo! pretty exciting! Maybe I'll dig through some pictures from the old house...

Carolina Bunny

A rare specimen I ran down after I took this photo. He wouldn't wipe the smirk off his face so I head locked him and took his candy. I think from the photo that its a boy.

Say hello to my littl' friend.

We were picking weeds in the yard yesterday, and this little guy jumped onto my arm. When he jumped into the grass, he all but dissapeared. There were quite a few bugs, but none were as cute as this one.

Nobody wants to see pictures of dead roaches.

Right after this picture, he puffed up like they usually do, then jumped onto the camera.

Little firecracker!