Animals around the neighborhood.

Mr. Nivose says: Having been here in Fort Collins for about 6 months I've been surprised by the animals around. Ft. Collins is a fairly dense urban center. Slow traffic, people, more people when college is in session.
They've done some effort to maintain parks and natural areas. And, given the wacky water laws in Colorado it's best that they did or there would be no fishing.
Our apartment is in a good sized complex of 5 buildings with 8 units in each building. We are on a fairly large road, though north and west enough from the center of the city to minimize traffic.
Just to our south, across the road, is fair sized park like Cemetery. Beyond that is a nine hole golf course and just east of that is a pond and park. The pond-park is a decent walk from our house, but still likely contributes to the lack of housing and support for wild animals in our area.
Abutting our property to the north is a cow range of some type. It seems that the herd is a bit sparse for the amount of land, but I don't really know about these things. And to our west is a house that used to be a goat farm. Signs of goats are long gone, other than the large field behind the house which we can see from our porch.

All of this open/unused/quite space means that the deer in the area come through often enough. I've barely seen them this winter, but through the spring and fall we saw a fairly decent herd often, and there was a mother with two young that we saw almost daily:See more pictures of the deer by clicking here.
In the second picture in that album it's dark and you can barely make out the tree line and two sets of glowing deer eyes. The last picture is one of the few of a male deer I was able to get. His antlers are of a good size. He's laying down in the goat property next to a fence. Most of the pictures are of the mother, or the two young that visited us the most. The property has some apple and pear trees, and the deer were quite fond of them. They are not the deer I am used to in NH, I don't know, but due to their funny ears am assuming they are mule deer.

At the north edge of property is a fence that separates us from the cow property. The deer have no trouble jumping this. Beyond it is a small grove of trees, then a large irrigation ditch. After the ditch is the beginning of the cow pasture. Most of the time they are quite a distance out in the field. However, a few times this summer they came across the ditch and hung out in the trees. I have no idea why this is (shade maybe), but it made it possible to take pictures of them that were not just distant specs:

See the rest of the cow pictures by clicking here.
You can see how they were right up to the fence. And in some pictures you can get an idea of the grove and where the ditch is. Watching cows try to cross the ditch can be kind of funny. They are not especially nimble.
Earlier this winter I was getting the mail. It had recently snowed, but it was a warm day. In one of the piles of snow near the mail box I saw a bee:
I found it to be fairly interesting. Snow and bees are not something I usually see together.

There are a number of animals that we have been unable to catch in pictures so far. A branch of the irrigation ditch that the cows use cuts south through one of our west end neighbors property and runs along the cemetery into the golf course. It includes many crayfish, and sometimes little fry or minnows. It drys up sometimes too, but when it's muddy it has prints of most of the animals that live around. There is one or more fox that seems to live in the cemetery but crosses our parking lot to hunt in the goat field. We also see bats in the goat field and the cemetery.
A large tree about 20 feet from our porch houses a family of raccoons. I didn't see them when they are small - though little raccoons are one of the cutest things in the world- but I have seen them full grown investigating the pumpkin remains in the dumpster.
I have an eye for cats of course. I've seen a few just once. But two I see often belong in another building in our complex. They live upstairs from each other and their owners leave their windows open for the cats to come and go. Keep in mind Colorado has little in the way of mosquitoes. The downstairs one is all black - sleek and cute. The upstairs one is also all black, but he's quite fluffy. His name is Sphere - I know, I picked him up once and that's what his collar read. He's a little shy, but cats like me pretty well.

Living in trees in the cemetery are a handful of owls. We are uncertain if it is a mother and about 3 nearly grown young. Or if it is a bunch of adults living separately. This spring we might have a better idea if we find some of them are moved on. They also hunt in the goat field, but the cemetery itself seems to provide some small mice or moles or some such.


Owls are not the easiest things to take pictures of with conventional cameras, but you can see the rest of the pictures by clicking here.
The owls do perch on the headstones at dusk a lot. If this is watching for signs of rodents and small birds. Or just getting their head straight before hunting, I can't say. One time we were coming up on one and it took off. From a distance we could see a small rock or something on the gravestone. My first thought was that it was an owl pellet. And it actually turned out to be one. You can see it in the last few pictures in the album.
The owls can be tough to spot in some of the pictures. It's easier once you know they are there, but that doesn't help terribly does it?

I did see a toad once, near our porch steps. But that's about it for amphibians. Despite all the irrigation ditch, there's not a lot of frog around here. We saw some baby snakes at a trail up the road, but no awesome lizards or tarantulas. Might have to venture to the even dryer areas for that. Though, this summer we had a couple very large praying mantises around. Which I did not see regularly in NH.

-Mr. Nivose

Mrs. Nivose says: It's not uncommon for me to run into deer in the parking lot as I leave in the mornings. I see them less often now that it is winter though. Sometimes there are 6 or 7 deer passing through. Some have antlers! The apartment complex we live in has several fruit trees around the buildings, a big field to the north and west, and a cemetery to the south. In addition there is an irrigation ditch running through the cemetery and another through the field, so there is plenty for the deer to eat and drink. They seem to like the apples quite well. I would say that the deer aren't too afraid of us. They'll keep eating if we're watching from the porch. They aren't tame though and will run away if we get too close.

When I first moved in here (a couple of months before Peter got here) there were two baby deer. One of the neighbors said they were twins. They were very, very cute and had still had a few spots. One evening I had been out for a walk and saw the mama deer and one of the babies over in the cemetery. As I approached the apartment, I heard a noise that sounded like a mewing cat. It turned out the other baby deer had gotten separated from its mama and was crying. I had never heard a deer say anything before, so this was very interesting. It thought about coming over to see me, but in the end was too scared. I tried to tell it where its mama and sibling were, but I don't speak deer very well. They all caught up with each other eventually.

The little deer are much bigger now. I can't tell them apart from the rest of the herd.
I've also seen the deer play with the fox that lives in the field. They looked like they were playing tag.
I last saw the deer about the beginning of January. There were 3 or 4 in the field having breakfast.

The field to the north is intended for cattle grazing. A few times this past summer, the cows crossed the irrigation ditch and came right up to the fence bordering their field and our parking lot. Up close, these were certainly not the groomed cows of the stock show, but regular cows with poop on their back ends and flies buzzing all over them. I got up close to take some of the pictures. Some of the cows were camera shy and moved away, others didn't care. They were so very cow like. Cows have this look on their faces that make it look like they're incapable of processing any information beyond whether or not what they are seeing is grass. It's almost like I can look into their eyes and see the molecules moving between the neurons in their brains. Cows just look like they think slow.

Still, having a field full of cows behind the apartment is a lot more interesting than just having more buildings behind the apartment.

I mentioned earlier that there's a cemetery across the street to the south. It's full of big trees and is quite park like, and during the growing months, water flows through the irrigation canal. We talk walks through the cemetery fairly often. We usually see raccoon and deer prints in the mud along the canal, and at night we sometimes go shine flashlights at the crayfish. But we don't have pictures of those things. We do have pictures of one of the owls. I once saw four owls in the cemetery on the same evening, but usually we just see one or two. As best as I can tell they're great horned owls.

The owls perch on the tall headstones and in the trees waiting for little rodents. Sometimes the owls leave gifts of pellets on the headstones. We can usually get close enough to them to make out some of the markings on their bellies, but we can't get close enough for a really good picture. They're very quiet when they fly away and have a huge wingspan. Their eyes are big and round and their heads rotate to watch us watch them. It's really neat to live so close to these big owls.

We also had a raccoon family living in the cottonwood tree just outside our apartment. There were 4-5 babies this year and they were adorable! They'd follow their mama in a line, and climb into the fruit trees and make squeaky little noises. We haven't taken any pictures of them yet. Hopefully there will be more this year!

Ok, here's the wildlife roundup: Mysterious owls, adorable raccoons, playful fox, hungry deer, stupid cows, crayfish and various birds and bugs and bats we haven't gotten into yet. We'll stay on the lookout for more!

-Mrs. Nivose

Halloween 2008, Pumpkins

Mr. Nivose says: This past year Steph has been doing her graduate studies, and part of that involves farm work. Short story is that the farm grows a bunch of pumpkins to make mold to use the mold on other plants they are experimenting on. So there's more than enough pumpkins and we got a bunch free. The car wasn't full, but it was a lot of pumpkins to have in a Civic.
The week of Halloween we spent most evenings carving them. By Halloween we had not even carved them all. Some of them, as you have seen, became our Christmas tree.
My favorite was the small pumpkin I carved as a cat face:


You can see the rest of the Pumpkin pictures by clicking here.

Steph's camera, it turns out, handles the low light bright thing far better than mine. The blurry ones are from my camera, poor shutter speed or some such.

Some of the pumpkins were kept inside when carved, but most went onto the porch.
As you may know, I own more glow sticks than most people.
Glow sticks were safer and less of a hassle than candles. They worked well enough for the porch pumpkins that we could put in the back shadowy area. Additionally, most of the carved pumpkins that we kept inside were placed around the bedroom with glowsticks. I especially enjoyed the red and the blue, though I do not believe there are any pictures of that.
Many of the Pumpkins we had carved and left around the livingroom and kitchen were lit with candles. It's a nice glow and I like the look very much. But when it comes to sleeping, or putting outside in the wind there's a lot to be said for glowsticks. Plus the colors are so much fun.

We allowed our neighbors to take some of the pumpkins we brought home, there is one picture of 2 pumpkins in a hall way. Those were carved by our immediate neighbor Merrill.

It turned out to be fairly time intensive, and I was actually working a lot then. In spite of how much time it took I would say it was very worth it. By the end it was sort of an imagination drain trying to think up different faces. But I'd do it again in a heart beat. I hope to do it again this year.

That's really about all we did for Halloween. No party or adventure or anything really. Mostly though, it was enough.

And just this week (mid January) we've been throwing out a few uncarved pumpkins that are reaching the end of their non-mushy lives. Still a few left holding up though.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We got the pumpkins from ARDEC. Some were the ones Kris (the lab manager) and I planted in early June and others were volunteer pumpkins from seeds left from the previous year's pumpkins. The pumpkins get planted to be used in mold studies on dry beans. Once the pumpkins are ready Kris bores a hole in them and adds a half cup or so of moldy birdseed which she had prepared earlier in the year. Once the seed has been added to the pumpkins, she spreads them around the bean field. As the pumpkins decompose, the mold works its way into the dirt. Now the field will already have mold in it and we can plant different varieties of beans and find out which are resistant to the mold. There were way more pumpkins than she needed so Peter and I took a bunch home- many, many more than I expected. We gave a couple to some of the neighbors, carved most of the rest, and the few that weren't carved ended up as our pumpkin tree.

We spent about 3 evenings carving the pumpkins and listened to some detective stories while we carved the pumpkins. I don't remember who wrote them, but some were better than others. Peter had lots of good ideas for the pumpkins he carved and I kept kept getting stuck for ideas. We lit them with glow sticks, but because it was cold outside, the glowsticks weren't as bright outside as they were inside. Some were very small and others were quite large. The small ones were very cute. It's very hard to make a scary carving, but cute ones are not so hard to do. We had them spread all over our apartment for a few days, then gradually took them outside as they broke down. Eventually we had to throw them away.

On Halloween night we lit some of the indoor pumpkins with candles, turned off the lights and took pictures. These are just a few of them, and one is actually a ceramic candle holder.


It was pretty fun carving all the pumpkins and seeing them everytime we came and went from home. I don't know if Kris is planning to plant more pumpkins this year, but I hope so!

-Mrs. Nivose

2009 Western Stock Show!!!!

Mr. Nivose says: We attended the 2009 National Western Stockshow in Denver CO. It's always in Denver, they built a huge complex for it. So far as I know it's the only thing the complex is used for. It's not a sports arena or anything. It's two large main buildings, one for livestock and one for horses. It's just off the Interstate, and part of the grounds are under the overpass. Instead of graffiti under the overpass they have tile mosaics that are stockshow themed; A big Blue Ribbon, LiveStock, Cowboys. And between them they have repeating tile patterns in "Western Colors".


You can see the rest of the underpass pictures, and the rest of the stockshow pictures in our album by clicking here.

The first thing we did when we got there (after taking pictures of the underpass and using the bathroom -long drive) was to head to the place labeled on the map for animal feeding. We didn't know if this meant that visitors got to feed the animals, or if it meant that visitors got to watch the staff feed the animals. We still don't. There wasn't really any feeding going on. The area was for the Future Farmers of America. It was a grouping of caged animals. A small calf, a goat, some pigs, bunnies, lots of chicken like things and some water fowl. The bunnies were cute, the birds were, well, they were birds. Though the black runner ducks were very entertaining. They stand straight up like people, not like normal ducks which are shaped like boats with legs.

There is a number or pictures of them, plus a small video we made of them posted on our youtube account which you can see by clicking here. They actually are shaped like the ducks I see upside down and skinless in Asian markets.
If you're into cute, I would suggest Steph's pictures of the bunnies, or my pictures of the chicks. Also in the mix of bird things there's some bird with a really long tail. I don't think it is a road runner or a phoenix, but I forget what it was.
After that we wandered through the agricultural displays. Took some pictures with a fake cow and a fake chicken. Saw the tiny dairy display they had to offer. I found that disconcerting, I understand most of the cows out here are beef cows, but still, there's a lot of dairy here too. What I decided in the end was that beef cows have a higher turn over - that is beef farmers have to buy new cows more often - that it was understandable that the dairy offering would be light.
We also talked to the bee guy for some time. I was interested in the idea of having one of those viewing hives for the bug zoo. It would have taken a lot of agreement from CSU, but ultimately what occurred to me was that the amount of pesticide/herbicide on campus would make it non-starter. The guy did tell us a little, though about all I remember him saying was
1: He eats a spoonful of pollen each morning. I don't remember why he does this, but I do remember that pollen is expensive.
2: The wasps were bad this year - attacking his hives (they steal honey and baby bees).
3: It's not that expensive to start your own hive, and it's cheaper if you can get a wild colony to move in and then replace the queen with a farmed one.

After the agricultural displays we were on our way to the petting zoo. Which was another high priority thing for us.
The Donkey was a little depressed looking, the LLamas (Alpacas?) were very over bearing. The Goats were ok, and the little ones were quite cute. One of the little ones was laying under the net that holds the hay that the goats eat from when they aren't being fed by visitors or eating your coat, this same little goat was covered in the hay that had been dropped (see picture in album).

Next we headed to the lower part of the building. Where they shear the goats and sheep. There's pictures of them in their little jackets after they are sheared naked, as well as some sheep with out jackets put back into their herd. If that's to help them keep warm by being pressed up against other sheep, I really don't know.
Later on, coming back through we saw that they had a room where they wash the sheep/goats before they shear them. It looks like a drive in car wash. Not a big automated one, but like the bays where you park and wash it yourself with the coin operated hoses.

Following the sheep we entered a larger room of cows. Lots of cows. The cows have a wash room too. We actually saw it before the goat wash. It's really funny to watch some dude scrubbing down a cow. This area was huge with cow after cow, though most of them were probably a year or so old. Young, but not tiny. Every stall that had a cow had a small vacuum looking thing that they used to blow the cows fur with. Person after person was blowing down the cows, or trimming them with eclectic shears. We did watch a few of the show-cow competitions where people bring in their cow and judges decide which is prettiest, or most cow-like, or really, I have no idea what they are judging them on.

Outside now we headed over to the stockyard where the large cows are kept. Last year there were signs for buffalo, but we didn't see any actual buffalo then or this year. There were lots of fliers that offered cow semen for sale (bull semen, technically, I guess). You'll understand that this was a funny thing.
The outside lot is HUGE. You can walk among the stalls, or up along a catwalk about 20 feet tall cutting through the middle of the stock yard. We did a little of both. Some of the pictures show the size of the yard, or the huge adjoining lot of pickup trucks (heh)(you could tell the pick-ups were people attending with livestock and not just visitors because they all had snow from the day before still on them). Some of the pictures show types of cows, or the ways that they were lined up.
A number of the pictures show the snow-cow that someone made next to their stall:We first saw it from the cat-walk, but had to go over to get a better look and take some pictures.

After that was the horse building. I don't really enjoy horses. There's some pictures of people riding around the warm-up rink, and some pictures of the judging/ribbon presentation we watched. Note the girl with out a horse being given first place. I have no idea where her horse went. We missed the actual riding event that we saw the score presentation for, so I don't know where her horse is or why it's not there. What you can't appreciate in the pictures is how unbelievably shiny many of the outfits of the women and girls had for riding horses.
In the horse building there were also a number of 8 or so foot tall metal windmills (decorative) just like the one my grandfather has had in his lawn for years.

That was about the whole of it. It goes on for more than a week, but we only attended the one day. It's probably not especially different day to day. On certain days (weekends especially) they do more show-based things. Rodeo stuff- bronco busting, cattle roping, etc. What they also have is "Mutton Busting". Mutton Busting, as I understand it is children doing a bronco riding like thing of sheep. I'm sure it's an absolute hoot to watch. But the weekend are likely too busy for my tastes, and the shows during the week are usually in the evening.
Additionally there were tons of people selling stuff. The big sponsors, like Jack Daniels, as well as companies selling big pick up trucks (Toyota and Dodge especially as I remember). Plus people with farm equipment, horse trailers, and other such stuff. More so there were huge sections of westernwear, leather goods, cowboy hats, a whole booth of belt buckles*, ribs and other BBQ food, junk for kids (plastic hats and guns). One huge booth was western furniture. Lots of leather couches, tables with legs made of steer horns, lamps with feet made out of spurs, stuff like that.

What they don't seem to have, which I am used to back east is Cow-Pie-Bingo. Which, if you don't know what it is, is basically an area of ground sectioned into a grid of small squares. You put down money for a certain square (C6 for example) and you get a ticket. If the cow wandering around that area craps in your square you win money. Not that I play, I'm just surprised it's missing. There was, after all, no shortage of cow shit.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: Last weekend we decided we wanted to go to the stock show and settled on going on Monday when it wouldn't be as crowded as on a weekend. It snowed a little Sunday night and Monday morning and there was enough of a wind that it was pretty cold outside. I think that made it even less crowded that day. (Magus is very sure she needs to be on my lap right now, helping with the writing.) We went to the stock show last year, but didn't take a camera.

The National Western Stock Show happens every January and lasts for about three weeks. I am still not entirely sure what all goes on. I know there is livestock judging and subsequent auctions. There are a lot of advertisements regarding breeding, so maybe the ranchers make arrangements to make more cows. There are also rodeos, but we didn't go to any rodeos. We did watch a little bit of cattle judging and some sort of horse riding competition. The horse riding was not very exciting. It wasn't like rodeo style barrel racing where the riders and horses look like they're going to fall over when they loop around the barrels. During this contest the riders barely got their horses to a trot, did some weaving around cones and came to a stop in front of the judges. It was very slow. All the female riders wore sparkly outfits. In the end, I'm not really sure what it was all about.

We also watched a little bit of the red and black Angus judging. I'm not sure what factors were being judged, but the weight per day for each animal was announced, and the cattle handlers had thin sticks to make the cows stand a certain way. It seemed like the handlers wanted the cows to be stretched out with their feet lined up. It was like cow modeling. It was even more like cow modeling when we went 'backstage' and saw how the cows were fluffed before judging. The cows were washed and blown dry and even combed and trimmed with clippers. It was really funny to see big rancher dudes walking around with hairstyling tools in their back pockets and fussing over cows hairs being out of place.

I think our favorite part is the petting zoo. I really like the little goats. I don't know if they're just really young or if they're just some sort if mini breed. They're really cute, but hard to feed because the bigger goats butt in so much. I think the animals in the petting zoo are far more interested in eating than being patted. It's too bad the ducks are fenced off. I would like to pet them. I'd also like to hold the bunnies, but they aren't even part of the petting zoo.


-Mrs. Nivose



*OK, I made up the belt buckle booth. Perfect plausible none-the-less.

Bug Zoo! With Pictures

Mr. Nivose says: Steph's school has an entomology club. We joined it, and volunteered for Bug Zoo duties. The Zoo is a small room a little bit wider than a closet with cages and tanks of various bugs*. Currently they are all shelved on one long wall. The other long wall contains empty cages and related equipment. The door is on one narrow wall with room left only for a currently unused large aquarium (literally an aquarium, set up for water - as apposed to a glass tank containing terrestrial life). The far end's narrow wall has a shaded window and a large shelf for gear/equipment/notes.

More than half the wall of cages is Tarantulas. One to a cage.

That's Steph holding Rosie.

We have an album of more pictures here LINK TO GALLERY. Including more pictures of us holding Rosie. Rosie is a Rose Haired Tarantula. So named I assume because of the reddish color on their backside (not that you can see it well in any of the pictures). It has been mentioned that with a name like that many pet Rose Hairs are named Rosie. She is pretty docile, we don't handle most of the Tarantulas. But we do feed them live crickets every week as well as water them.
Some eat more than the others, but most are a little slowed down now (for the winter I assume).

Last week when we went in one of the Tarantulas had molted! It was the first time in the months we've been doing this that I'd seen it. We took down his cage to feed and water him and...there were two of him. There's a couple of pictures, including an underside so you can see his teeth, as well as one showing the hatch in his back that opens. It was quite an amazing time.

One of the Tarantulas is a BirdEater. It is quite big. I believe it was Shiloh-chan's previously. Many of the bugs are donated pets. There's a couple of pictures of the BirdEater, including one with my hand outside the tank for scale. It's the most likely of the tarantulas that we have to eat it's cricket right away.

A couple months ago we lost both of our WolfSpiders (they died, they didn't get out and wander the school), which are not web makers. They look and act a lot like small tarantulas (which makes them fairly large spiders nonetheless). They also would eat as soon as dinner was served.

There are also a large number of Widows. Western Widows though, not casually distinguishable from Black Widows. It is a tiny bit unnerving to open their jars and feed them crickets. But it mostly goes well. It's hard to over come the idea that what they really want is to get out and bite me. But part of tending all the bugs is misting the cages. And the mister is a good way to herd any Widow that isn't just running scared to the bottom of her cage. We don't actually have any pictures of them, but in the one picture of the room itself you can see in the middle a hamster cage - sawdust, weave nest, water bottle, hamster wheel. In that cage is a Widow. She's also the most regular eater of the half dozen or so Widows that we tend. It's actually quite entertaining. She also seems to rest in the hamster nest ball.

The rest of the Widows are in glass jars of various sizes except for one that is in a canister for tennis balls.

Our scorpion died earlier this month. In the few months we were tending him he wasn't eating much, and rarely came out of his coconut home. In the gallery there are pictures of me holding him after he died, as well as one of him (dead) in his cage with his coconut. Before he died it was pretty clear that he wasn't doing well. Also he had recently had a trip to Reno, and just possibly he partied a little too hard there.

Just this week our Praying Mantis also passed. She was beautiful and huge. She had been my favorite bug for a while, and while it is sad to loose her it is notable that December is quite late for a Mantis to survive to. She molted twice while we had her, she was quite small when we got her late this summer. It's amazing how huge she got as a final stage adult. She also had quite an appetite and was better fed than any of the other cricket eaters. Many times she would eat her whole cricket while we were still there attending to other bugs and I would give her another which she would start on right away. The pictures in the Gallery of her are when she was not quite dead yet, but no longer able to stand. We didn't name her, but she'll always be special to me.

As numerous as the widows and tarantulas may be. They are easily outnumbered by the two types of roaches. The discoid roaches (pictured in the gallery enjoying their fruit) and the Hissing Cockroaches.


That's me holding a Hissing Cockraoch. They're actually a lot of fun. They're large and cranky, well, they Hiss. They don't seem to crazy about being picked up, but they are kind of lazy and once you have them they won't do much to get away or help you once you are done holding them. They hold on surprisingly well for bugs their size.

The discoid roaches are if anything even more fond of their food. Both types also get small dashes of fish food. The discoid roaches are used for racing in childrens outreach programs. There's a small cage of painted roaches that the kids get to pick out and race. They are quite quick.

One of the most amazing bugs is the millipede, he's huge! There's more pictures of him in the gallery, to get a good idea of the scale of him. The past two weeks he's been very thirsty and has come out when we've misted him. He drinks for a long time. Being from out of state I can understand this, it is very dry here. He holds on to things very very well. I've not seen him move as quick as you might expect him to be able to. But he has a small cage, so it might be tough to get up to speed.

There's a couple of cages of beetles. One picture of them. They like their food very much. One of the cages also has grubs and little beetles.

Steph and I also pop-in on Holidays when we can to make sure everybody has holiday cheer and gets a little extra food if they've already finished what they've got. Otherwise there's 2 feedings a week. We do the Tuesday one, which is also cricket day. On Fridays it's just fruit and water.


-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We joined the entomology club at the start of the school year mainly to help take care of the bugs in the zoo. We also though it would be a good place to keep bugs we caught since we don't really have room for them at home, but we haven't caught a lot of bugs yet. I don't know a whole lot about bugs, but it is fun watching them and getting to know them.

There's not a whole lot of variety in the bug zoo- mostly tarantulas, roaches and black widows. Too many black widows in my opinion. But there's also a wind scorpion which is a small spider (not really a scorpion) that lives in southern Colorado. They burrow under the sand. I never see the wind scorpion out and about in its cage, so I have no idea if it is still alive. There were two, but one died before it was moved into a cage. We didn't take a picture of the wind scorpion because there isn't really anything to see.

There have been other spiders, too. There was an orb spider for a few weeks, but it died. It had narrow brown and white stripes all over its body. There were two wolf spiders for a while, but they also died. They were fun to watch at feeding time. Peter would throw the crickets into their cages and the wolf spiders would see the crickets and pounce on them so fast! A lot of spiders only live for a year or two, so it's not a big surprise that they often don't live long in the zoo. A wolf spider crossed our path once when Peter and I were hiking in the hills around Horsetooth Resevoir, and once at night when we were out looking for frogs in Boulder. They're pretty big spiders. Not tarantula sized, but leg to leg, easily bigger than my palm.

The black widows (Whitney says they're actually Western Widows- a close relative of the black widow) are my least favorite. I think we had 8 in there at one point and are now down to 5 or 6. One of them was a male that Peter caught near the laundry room of our apartment. We didn't know what it was at first because the males have a different color pattern than the females, but the people in Whitney's lab identified it for us and we left it in the zoo. We watched one of the widows get very, very big, then she got smaller and smaller and now she's dead. So, they seem to life out their life span then die. We keep a close eye on them though to make sure they haven't laid eggs. The last thing we need is an infestation of baby widows. Peter feeds and waters the widows. Sometimes I will give them their squirt of water, but usually Peter takes care of them. When he starts feeding these spiders I get either hot or cold and slightly nauseated. I'm more comfortable around them than I used to be, but still prefer to stay away from them.

The spiders get fed crickets, and we put water in their dishes and mist their cages. The tarantulas don't like being misted very much and start running away from the mist. The smarter ones run into their little houses. The roaches, millipede and darkling beetles eat fruits and veggies- mostly apples, oranges and cabbage- and get water and mist as well. I like the darkling beetles. They just sort of clunk around in their cage, crawling over everything and falling over. The seem to spend their time eating, crawling around and trying to mate. Judging from how many baby darkling beetles there are, I'd have to say that a lot of the mating works out for them.

The hissing roaches are pretty boring. They hiss sometimes and that's about it. The discoid roaches are a little more entertaining and I think they're cuter than the hissing roaches- at least when they're adults and have wings. The discoid roaches run very fast and get very excited about their food. They also burrow into the ground stuff of their cage. Other than that they don't do much.

Sometimes the bugs go on trips. Some have been to Reno, some have been to the local farmers market (touch the tarantula for free if you buy something!) and there are other outings to schools and fairs.

I like feeding and watching the bugs with Peter. It continues to be fun to get to know these creatures together.

If any of you come visit we can take you to the zoo!

-Mrs. Nivose


*I am using "bug" in the vulgar - anything generically creepy crawly- and not in the scientific "true bugs" of the order Hemiptera, nor in the sometimes argued "just insects" context.