Burying Beetles

The night before we left for Canmore, we had a dead rodent in our yard - I think it was a mole of some kind as it was much bigger than a mouse. Anyway......Lloyd made me go and look at it (lol) and I noticed it was moving..so I caled him over and we pushed it with a stick to see what was moving it!! Ewwww! It was two beetles!!! Just two small beetles moving this HUGE dead rodent!! They had even dug a big hole underneath the rodent and They were stunning bugs!! Black with red markings - and as we love bugs at this house, we showed Sam and then we got our bug catcher and caught one and took it inside to look it up in our 'Bugs of Alberta' book!!!

It turned out it was a 'Burying Beetle' and they are FASCINATING!!! It is thanks to these little guys that Alberta is not covered in dead mice!!! they help eat up and bury all the dead mice and 'stuff' lying around - as well as help eat up all the bigger dead stuff! Just two of these little guys can bury a huge dead rodent!!! They can even move a dead rodent to somewhere more suitable to bury!!! Wow!!!

www.earthlife.net/insects/nicrophorus.html

www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/natural/insects/bugsfaq/burying.htm

We carried the beetle back out to it's 'mate' and let them get on with cleaning up our yard - and in the morning the rodent was GONE!!! :)

Aren't bugs the coolest???? Like they have their own little job to do!!! They are here for a reason.... :)

Fun at the splashpark....at 32.8c!!! :)

Yesterday we met Val at the Esso for breakfast to celebrate 'back to school' :) We were hoping to see Grace, but she is STILL in Hong Kong!! She went for one month but has now been there for three months and is getting some treatment for her bad knee. I hope she is ok and back soon!! We miss her!!

After breakfast we headed to Beaumont to the Splashpark. It was lovely and quiet there for a AGES. Val arrived a little while later with her Daughter and gorgeous Grandson. Then not too long after, a big schol class arrived!!!! OMG two days in and they are on a school trip to the splash park!! We were there to enjoy a break from school kids and all of a sudden school kids were EVERYWHERE!!!! Gggrrrrr!

Oh well, we had a lot of fun!! Sam and Abby splashed Val LOTS and then she got them both upside down and dunked them under the fountains!!! Those muscles she built up in her arms from carrying little Z certainly paid off!

Val left in time to meet her older kids form the school bus, but my two didn't want to leave! We stayed for a while after that until the wind picked up a bit more and the clouds started to gather a little more - they had forecast a big storm and I wasn't sure when it would arrive, so I figured it was best to head off before then. I wanted to get all the yard toys picked up before things got too windy.

Mind you, the wind was still strong enough to pick up the paddling pool (with water in it)!!

The storm here was just a few gusts of wind and a LITTLE rain :( it actually by-passed us AGAIN!!! We really could do with a nice big storm and LOTS of rain...sigh.......but it missed us. Now they are saying we may get a little rain Saturday night! Which was the night we were supposed to camp!!!!