Natureful Spring!

 Now that today is going to be 90, I am reflecting on our wonderful spring of 2015.  Our neighborhood water retention pond has been rumored to have an alligator but this year we finally saw it ourselves and several times, both on the grass and in the water (above)

This became the big excitement, our family would ride our bikes around the pond almost every day, and when we had guest like my parents and Kathy for Passover and Global Austin visitors (above, photo credit, our buddy who fishes and first pointed out the gator to us) we would go look for it.  This time we were successful.  

On our first neighborhood friend Wednesday afternoon playgroup, a news crew was also at the park.  People from the neighborhood were concerned about the gator and had called.  Our kids got to be the examples of how close children play next to alligator habitat, I was interviewed and it was very exciting. The news crew never spotted it though.

 One day when we were trying to take family bluebonnet pics in a different park, this little killdeer bird make a bunch of noise and tried to get us away from her nest.  The girls really wanted to find her eggs but we didn't let them because we knew we wouldn't be able to see them in the grass.  A few days later at our park, we came along another killdeer doing the same thing.  We stepped carefully and Lydia spotted her nest of 4 tiny eggs!

 For about two weeks we would go check on it daily.  The mama never was too sure about us but didn't always do her fake hurt flying away.  At the LBJWC Gloria got to pretend to be mama killdeer.

 Then one day we arrived and there were four perfect little babies in the nest!!

 "Get away from my babies"

Like deer, since they are ground birds they hatch ready to walk.  We saw them that afternoon, again that evening, the next day and then the third day the whole family was gone.

 In addition to baby birds and gators, this has been a great spring for bugs.  Flower trees were covered with bees and butterflies (like this one at church) and one day at the pond, all of our bluebonnets were covered with ladybugs. The girls also found a little turtle at the pond, which we have now in our fish tank~new pet!

Back to the gator, the TPWD game warden was tired of getting calls about people who didn't want it there and about kids harassing it, so he decided it needed to be caught and relocated.  The HOA had a meeting but the decision had already been made.  Gloria's head got on the news again from that one.  So currently there are two traps out (which are huge hooks with chicken on them) but no word on if the gator has been caught and taken away.  This was unsuccessfully attempted last year.