According to herpsoftexas.org, Gulf Coast Toads can grow up to 4 inches in length. So this must be a grandmother toad, as she is at the top end of her growth. (I’m not actually sure she is a she, but I thought in toads, females are larger.)

I can’t believe she just let me put my hand that close for a picture. But then again, I’ve had others of this species sit on the door sill as if they are waiting to be asked in for tea. She probably wouldn’t wait, she would come in and help herself!

We have so many beautiful dragonflies around our house. Probably because of the pond next door, but I love that they are here. I dragged my good camera out of hiding because this dragonfly was perched in the late afternoon sun, and I couldn’t resist. I’m posting this picture because it seems unusual in the lineup of dragonfly pictures, with the coloring and composition, but I like the detail of the wings.

Walking through the back woods I saw an actual cicada nymph. Not the cast off shell, not the adult cicada, but a nymph who had just dug out of the ground and was looking for a place to climb up high. I’ve never witnessed this before!

Cicada nymph

Its a bit hard to see in the leaf litter, so I guess this post becomes a little bit of Where’s Waldo.

My eldest has been telling me that she has been seeing extra large June bugs in the yard. I finally was able to spot one and take a picture! According to my iNaturalist app, this is the Grapevine beetle, also known as the spotted June bug. And it is larger than your average June bug; this one is just over 1” long. This phrase on Wikipedia amused me: “The beetles fly at a fast speed, usually in a curving flight.” That is a pretty big buzzing curve ball coming at you through the dark.

Snakes? No problem. Beetles? Easy peasy. Cockroaches? I now feed them to my chickens. Worms? Na, I bait my own hook. Spiders? Um. Great big yellow and black garden spiders? Even though they are non-aggressive? Heebie Jeebies. So getting close enough to this guy to take a picture with my phone was a personal act of bravery. Taking down her web by disconnecting the anchor lines and leaving her one line (as far away from me as possible) to retreat was cold steel. But see, I had to get to the other side of her web to put the roosts back up in the chicken run. It was for my chickens. And I’ve learned this technique for dismantling spider webs the hard way; I really, really hate walking through spider webs. Gack. We have so many, many spiders this summer. I have to keep telling myself that yes, there are a ton of spiders, but there don’t seem to be many flies. So the spiders stay, even if I have to pull up my big girl pants and deal with the gentle yellow and black nightmare.