Frightening the Visitors

We were lucky enough to have my husband's parents visit this week.  Though work and Dagobah Academy still continued, we did have a great day off on Thursday.  My best, good Houma Facebook friend told me about the Southdown Mandalay Wildlife Refuge.  It's a nature trail and boy oh boy did we see some nature.

Spoiler alert: for those arachnophobes out there, be warned!  My poor mother-in-law is an arachnophobe.  My husband decided that for participating on this little adventure, she deserved a bravery award and I totally agree.  There were huge, creepy banana spiders absolutely every step of the trek.  These photos are not all the same spider and I couldn't capture all that we saw, just to help you understand the need for bravery.

Can you find one here?

My favorite banana spider of the day.

Seeing these creepies over your head and all around you is a bit scary, even though they're not poisonous.  It was pretty funny watching the only mammals on the trail making funny faces the whole way.  We were told by one of the natives that this is a relatively small version of this type of spider.  Yikes!!

There were plenty of creepies everywhere!  We really enjoyed being nature spies and trying to locate as many things as we could.  Everyone was rooting for the bugs to eat the mosquitos too because they were eating us alive.  We are dumb Northerners who forgot our bug spray.  Hopefully no West Nile virus will follow our stupidity.

Frisky grasshoppers

More black grasshoppers

snail shell

Find the dragonfly?

We got to the observation deck and found a couple of gators!  They were small, but could see them really well.  There was a huge gator on the way home in the bayou too.  Unfortunately, we weren't fast enough to snap a shot of him.  He was a "big'en" though.  We did get lucky with a turtle. 

Gator head

Gator sunnin'

Nature spies!

Turtle taking a dip

It was a great, hot, creepy time in the bayou.  Hopefully we can fit in a boat tour for our visitors the next time they're here.  That is, if they can handle the "heebie-jeebies".  Come back soon y'all!!