Ava recently raised 5 Painted Lady caterpillars to butterflies. All 5 that were shipped as tiny caterpillars lived to be beautiful butterflies.

Here she is releasing one of them on a nice day

Hard to spot, but it’s on a flower down there.

Cropped close-up of the Painted Lady:

We’ve also been having fun taking the rats (Ratsie and Skidders) out on sunny days. They love playing out in the bushes of the front yard.

We had some nice fall weather this weekend so Ava and Scott went to the Hulls Gulch area to see if they could catch some lizards (we looked them up and identified them as native Northern Sagebrush Lizards). They are really quick and good at hiding in tiny cracks… deceptively hard to catch. We only caught a few after trying various methods but it made the trip worthwhile.

This one we named “Lightning”

Lightning was content sitting on Ava’s leg for a few minutes in the sun

Ava shows her joy holding the little guy

And finally he had enough and scurried back home.