Wildlife at Work

I found this small turtle in the brush while making my rounds at the river wells. I put him in the truck with me and let him enjoy some country music for a while. He must not have liked it because he kept trying to walk off the center console.....possibly to his death...for all he knew! Who could blame him? Generally all the turtles sit on logs or the banks of ponds and rivers to ensure a speedy getaway. It's a good defense against people like me who turtle nap them and force them listen to Toby Keith & Garth Brooks!

I found this snake near one of the springs near the refinery. Little does he know, the amount of arsenic found in that spring will more then likely send him to that big snake wrangler in the sky!

God Speed Little One......

Now this snake was a bit larger. I walked up on this this five foot Northen Water snake hanging out in a tree watching my co-worker Jeremy take samples of a spring. Apparently this snake is aware of the arsenic levels and decided to follow Darwins law and evolve into a Northern TREE snake! If you look in the upper left hand corner of the picture, you'll see him hanging out in the tree checking us out. I took the two pics below before I grabbed him. Unfortunately I couldn't pull him out of the branches and he gave me the slip.

Gardening and a walk.

Today was a very productive day for the Rowe family. While Mama bear went to work, Papa bear and the two cubs did some light gardening and some not so light exploring. Cassie, Dave and Myself dug up a little piece of lawn (2 more acres where that came from) so we could all enjoy some assorted tomatos this season. Once we removed the grass down to 4 inches deep, we added some miracle grow soil, mixed it all up and viola.....a garden. Lucky for us, Tara had time after work to actually put the plants in the ground because we had gotten bored and went for a walk. When we got back, we topped it with mulch and surrounded it with a little fence to keep the pugs out!

This is Cassie looking for arrowheads...to no avail. Dave is somewhere out there.
This is actually one of our neighbors ponds he made. We picked up a some friends to join us on our journey. That's Kobe jumping in for a swim with Dave in the background doing some side exploration of his own.
The pond was made by daming up a very small creek caused by a spring. He then put sod down on the top of the dam so it made for some real nice dog paddling. The water is about 10 feet deep and from what I understand catfish were added.

Found some new friends

These are a couple of new friends we've met recently, including a 10 pound snapping turtle and a calf, a friend of Dave owns.

Piggie and Calf......A new TV show!

Boy I love steel toe boots!