Science Lesson - The Crawdad

Most of you know from reading my blog, we live in the country and have access to a pond. By "access," I mean there is a pond on the adjacent land the city owns. Having a pond so close means there are lots of critters to learn about. After the giant rain on Easter we went down in the valley for a walk and noticed a bunch of these on the walking trails:

When we flipped them over we found this:

If you can't tell, those are bunches of babies holding on to the back of the tail. Now if you are interested you can google the life-cycle of a crawdad/crayfish as I did. I will spare those of you not interested in how it all works. Here is one in a hidey hole.

All around the pond there were remains of these guys. I guess the raccoons got to some of them and cracked em open to suck the guts out. (Reminds me of eating the head of a prawn. My husband and one other person will get that.)

The night before these pictures were taken all of the girls and my mom were with me. Mary was holding Mera and a crawdad at the same time. She stopped paying attention and Mera reached for the little creature and was promptly pinch. She screamed, I pulled the crawdad off, my mom laughed, G and Darby screamed. So Georgia is not in any of these pictures because she refused to go back down there. Mera had no hard feelings.



Holding a dead one.

I love this little girl!