We weren't able to find a good time to go while Bubba and Uncle Chris were there, and we wanted to hurry up and go catch some - you never know when/if there will be a big rain and all the critters get washed downstream...so today after school we just climbed right over their gate.
Their creek is so pretty.
At first we didn't see anything. And then finally we saw one. Then two, three, four...they were everywhere! Once your eyes adjust and you see one, they all kind of pop out. How many crawdads do you see here?
Did you find eight??
How about here?
Wow, there are nineteen!!!
Okay, that was fun, but I spent w-a-y too long on it... :)
We got out our cups and got busy seeing what we could catch.
Crawdads are definitely harder to catch than tadpoles. But we finally ended up with one!
Then we figured out that with some teamwork, we could surround them and though it was still hard, we could catch them a little easier than what we had been trying.
Josiah even caught one all by himself! (Granted, it was already in our bowl...but he was excited! ;)
After we had a small handful of crawdads in our bowl, the boys decided they'd had enough. They turned their attention instead, to playing in the water and throwing rocks.
But all too soon it was time to head home. But only after we picked up all of our sophisticated crawdad-catchers. :)
The original plan was to catch a few crawdads, and then let them go. But the boys really wanted to take them home to show Bret.
So we kept a few, took them home, showed Bret, and then took them to the tadpole creek and let them go. We've never seen crawdads there, and I felt a little guilty - hopefully they didn't come to a long and painful demise in an environment not suitable for crawdads.
Update:
I guess I was a little more anxious about those silly little crawdads than I thought I was. I had the craziest team last night. It was spring next year, and we had gone to the park for our annual tadpole extravaganza...and were excited to see a handful of crawdads while we were there. And then we went out the next year, and there were just as many crawdads as there were tadpoles. And then the next year, all we could find was crawdads, not a tadpole in sight. We had completely upset the ecosystem. Good grief. Only time will tell, I guess! ;)