A word chosen by Griff, who couldn't possibly have had any idea of how many animals we'd actually see today. We started out with a boat tour hosted by Tarpon Bay Explorers. When I set up the tour, I assumed two things: that we'd have more success sighting birds and manatees in the morning, and that it would be easy to make an 8:15 appointment with my early early risers. I was right on the first point, and the kids did still rise early, but I had grossly misjudged how difficult it is to actually get people motivated and out the door by 8 AM when you have access to that wondrous, glorious, exotic treat, cable TV. A million thanks to NickJr and Disney for refreshing my commitment to remaining a cable-free household.
So, anyway, once we had broken free of the clutches of early childhood consumerist indoctrination, we headed out to join the breakfast cruise, and made it to the boat just in time. Waiting for us was quite the spread. Donuts! Granola bars! Coffee! Yum. And that's all before we left the dock. After that, we were treated to a plethora of nesting egrets and pelicans, ospreys and terns overhead, cormorants on oyster shoals, and some sightings of dolphins and manatees coming up for air. The kids shared a pair of binoculars around and I enjoyed the information shared by our tour guide. No spoonbills for me, but getting to see the manatees surfacing (sorry, the photos are completely boring) was exciting for this girl who, once upon a time, pored over National Geographic pictures of these animals and made them the topic of her 5th grade science report.
When we returned to land, the tour guide opened up an aquarium section of the visitor center and explained a host of different estuarine critters to us. My boys were the only children there aside from one other infant, and Reese was happy to stare at starfish in a tank, so Griff got a lot of attention from the guide and a chance to hold many of the touch tank critters. Once again, Xander was anxious about the spider crabs, worrying that we might get pinched by them. I am happy to report that no such pinching occurred.
And yet, none of those animals merited word of the day status, because later we found THIS amazing creature right outside our hotel room door:
This grasshopper was ENORMOUS. I mean, HUGE. I took a picture of it next to my lens cap but it still failed to capture just how GIGANTIC it was. I've never seen an insect this big outside of a museum. Its body, not counting the legs extending behind it, was a good 4"-5" long. And that color! Have you ever seen a bright orange grasshopper before? I hadn't.
Now, I've handled a lot of bugs, but giant bugs kindof creep me out and I don't really want to touch them. I'm working on it, but not quite there. While I was laying on the ground trying to capture this guy's image, he* kept turning and walking toward me. No hopping, no flying away, just this slow, inevitable creep toward me. With his palps (the thingies hanging down from his mouth) moving the whole time. Super creepy. But I was concerned for his safety, worried that another hotel guest might freak out and squash him, so I picked up two plastic Chinese takeout containers we had been using as beach toys and caught him to move him. Well, once he figured out he had been trapped, he went crazy, leaping frantically inside the cups. You do NOT want to feel a bug this big leaping inside a cup you're holding. Yikes. I moved him to a spot near the fish pond, off the path, where there were plants to hide in.
The kids, of course, stoked the whole time, begging me to take pictures, checking out this awesome creature, cheering me on for "saving" him from dark strangers, and asking what kind of grasshopper it was. So after relocating him, I ran for Google. Apparently this guy is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper, known for being huge and bright and slow-moving (check, check, check). It's a good thing I didn't pick him up, because when disturbed, they can hiss and excrete a smelly foam that can irritate your skin. My decision not to pick up something brightly-colored and big = aposematic coloration WIN. Of course, I can't find a single video of a lubber hissing or spitting or foaming or frothing or poisoning local birds, and in this day and age, if it ain't on YouTube, it ain't happening, so perhaps these grasshoppers just have a zest for colorful attire and a good PR agent. Moving on.
For the record, these are not locusts. A friend commented that these bugs "turn into locusts". Locusts are the swarming phase of specific species of grasshoppers, and Romalea guttata is not one of those species. They're large, but don't eat much for their size. They don't fly or swarm. They don't associate with those Biblical plague-y types. They can, however, be damaging to gardens or crops when large numbers of them are present. (I'm hoping I did the right thing in letting this one live.)
Finding this guy was the cherry on top of my vacation. It has already been an excellent, spontaneous, adventurous, soul-nourishing time for me and the boys. Add a giant bug...who could ask for more?
*male pronouns were used before it suddenly occurred to me (after writing the post) that I could check the sex of this insect. The presence of an ovipositor suggests that this one is female. That's what I get for submitting to the patriarchy.