Animal Planet

It has been a bit of a wild kingdom around here this past week. About 45 minutes after we had been swimming in the pool on Monday I happened to look out the window and saw something floating in the pool. "What is that?" Sure enough, on further inspection I could see it was a gila monster.

I called the kids in to see it and then decided the dead gila monster could just float there until Tim got home that evening to take it out. Not the case! So later on the kids came running into the room, "the gila monster is alive!" Apparently he was just taking a swim in the pool and not really dead. An hour later when we looked for him again we couldn't find him because he had gotten sucked up by the pool filter. When Tim got home that evening he cautiously opened up the pool filter and there was the gila monster sitting on the rock that holds the basket down in the filter. Gila monsters, I later learned, are quite poisionous and it is "excruciatingly painful" if you are bitten. Fortunately they are very slow moving and not really a danger to humans. If you are bitten by a gila monster they won't let go, so you should immerse the bitten part and the monster in water and then they will let go (just an FYI). So the fire department came to take him away (which was pretty exciting in and of itself) and since they were here, they also took the dead frog away which was also in the pool filter.....

....so on Sunday night Tim and I were in the office downstairs when we heard a strange sound which we thought was a wounded bird. Tim went to check it out and found a big old frog in the pool. The frog was trapped, so Tim got the pool skimmer and helped him out. Apparently he decided he wasn't done swimming and must have gotten back in....

....Friday night is sleepover night around here. So Eric and Rach were having their sleepover in Eric's room and apparently thought they would check things out outside and opened the blinds to see what was going on. They came out of the room to tell Tim that there was a tarantula running across the driveway. "Go back to bed and stop looking out the window" was what they were told by Tim. "No really, Dad!" Sure enough, there was a huge tarantula running across the driveway. Apparently the annual tarantula convention is going on right now in Oro Valley so this little guy was quite timely....

...Oh, and it has been a banner year for scorpions around here. I have just canceled our bug contract with the second company this year that after seeing yet another dead one in the house this week.

So what is the deal with all of the this wildlife?? I keep reminding myself that wild animal bites and problems are significantly fewer and less dangerous than if we lived in an area with weather related driving and accidents. Nevertheless, here's hoping our encounters are fewer this next week.