Strange Critter

Well, it's been a while since we've had anything interesting on our game camera, so I've taken to photographing the critters in the immediate vicinity of our house. The other night this little guy scared the crap out of me... I think it's some sort of albino praying mantis.

Albino Mantis?

I Shall Call Him Fred.

Anyone out there have some idea as to what he is?

The Creature Chronicles Part 3: A Snow White Moment

Today was seriously beautiful. The weather has cooled down a little bit (this morning it was in the 60s) and the animals of Sutter Creek decided to come out and play. I'm serious, I felt like Snow White:

A whole little herd of deer were hanging out just outside of the house... munching on some grass. I tried to get my camera to get some pictures, but every time I moved past the window they looked like they were going to bolt and I decided that you've all seen deer and I should just enjoy the moment. They looked something like this:

A little later on, I decided to head down to the grocery store and had to stop in the middle of the road so that a flock of turkeys could cross. By the way, for those of you who have followed my struggle with how to pluralize "turkey" (turkies? turkii?) over the last few years, I finally looked it up. How do you say multiple thanksgiving birds? Turkeys. Now you know.

Anyways, as if that wasn't enough, I had a ton of hummingbirds hanging out tonight. I definitely felt very immersed in nature today... I think they were all coming out to enjoy the slightly cooler weather!

The Creature Chronicals Part 2

As promised, I've been trying to snap pictures of the fun (and sometimes scary) critters around my house. I found this one the other day when I was working on digging up the peach tree. On a side note, Mike said that I loosened it up for him - two hard whacks with the sledgehammer got the roots out. I knew I should have pounded on it for a little bit longer! The new crepe myrtle looks beautiful!

I digress...

I discovered a lizard (look really hard in the middle of the picture):

Lizard

There are tons of these little guys all over up here. They're incredibly fast, which is why the picture is a little bit blurry... I had to sit very still for about five minutes to get him to come back out of the bushes after I originally spotted him. These little guys are super fast and tend to hang out just about everywhere outside. They scare the heck out of me because I'll hear something move in the leaves and, of course, my mind immediately things I'm about to be eaten by a mountain lion, only to look over and see a little lizard tail scoot away. Of all the critters around here, these guys might be my favorites... they stay outside, look cute and leave me alone!

The Creature Chronicles Part 1

Ok, I'm officially starting a new feature on my blog called "The Creature Chronicles". Basically, I'm going to start posting pictures of all the scary bugs at my house. I saw this one out front on Tuesday evening after Mike and I got home from a bike ride. Without further ado, I bring you the first entry:

Centipede

It's some sort of creepy centipede thing. It's different than most of the ones I've seen up here - normally they're black and this one definitely was not. Bug lovers out there, do you have a name for this one?

Note that I was brave enough to put my finger in the picture. Historically, I've been very bad at getting close enough to some of these things to get something in there to show scale. I promise, now that I'm documenting my scary bugs, that I will get something in there to show you how big they are.

Stay tuned for more... I know, you're all waiting with bated breath...