critters keeping it real

We human critters can get a tad us-centric, me included. So, i love it when nature crashes into my orbit. Like the night when i lived in the French Pyrenees and i couldn’t get to sleep for all the rustling and moving round some critter was doing in the dark. Presuming it was one of the kittens, i turned on the light only to see that an enormous toad had managed to climb up, and was sitting, front and centre on my altar. My neighbour, who used to live in that house (it dated back to 1670 something), swears it had been living in my garden for eighty years.

Or in the summer, when i’d go to water my pots outside the frontdoor and the plant would be on the ground and there’d be the toad buried in the moist soil up to his neck, waiting for a free rainfall.
Anyway, this wee corner of the world is no different.
Here’s a few of our critters from the past week.

Biggest one i've since i've been back in NZ. Came in from the bush one night, right above the toilet...(i peed outside that night)

We called it a leaf slug. In that same window.

Jed and i were sitting in the first of the morning sun on the steps to the garden. He picked up a hollow stick and broke it. A very stunned looking gecko fell out and promptly fled, leaving us his tail to marvel at. So cool they can do that. It must've wriggled for half an hour after its owner abandoned it. Jed's face was priceless.

We have a fabulous animal encylocpaedia and an insect book out from the library, i’m learning as Jed does. There are wonders all around us, if only we can stop long enough to notice....

Who knew stick insects can drop a leg if something grabs onto it? And that they grow another? Saw one extricate itself from a spider’s web today.

Pretty wild, that Nature.