Pond-erings

When the girls and I visited the pond at the university nature preserve earlier this week, a man was wading in the water, picking up trash. A woman was helping him, pointing out things from the bridge. He was a teacher there, and he picked up some of the critters in the water and held them out for the girls to see and touch.

I passed on touching the snake, but he pointed out that it had been bitten by something — probably a snapping turtle. He also explained that it was a female, and though it wasn’t poisonous, its saliva had an anticoagulant in it.

We saw a second one later. It’s striped, so maybe  it was a male.

I’ve never seen even one water snake before. It was noteworthy to see two in one day. He also picked up some salamanders and a big green frog for us to “meet.” Despite all the excellent resources available to homeschoolers, it was a real treat to be in the presence of a bonified expert who took the time to share some of his expertise with us.

The only sad thing: he found a dead muskrat in the water, one that appeared to have been shot. It probably explains why we see only one when we come, instead of the two we saw back in January. Who would shoot a muskrat? in a nature preserve? Much of nature study feels like we’re putting together a puzzle that makes more and more sense, but sometimes human behavior makes no sense in natural terms.

At the vernal pool we saw plenty of the usual suspects — frogs, salamanders, turtles, and eggs. The eggs had advanced from looking like this on April 2:

…to looking like this on April 16:

In both cases they remind me of tiny, submerged planetary systems. But they’re so much more advanced now.

This is such a great part of our nature study this year — visiting the same old places, and discovering the ways they are not “same old” at all. They change with the weather, with the seasons, with the time of day, with the attitude of the observers and how much we’re willing to look. It’s an amazing world we live in.