When you walk in the woods its not only flowers you see.

If you have any young children especially boys between the ages of 2 and 6 they are going to love these pictures. When I went for a walk in the woods on Saturday to show my husband the green trilliums we saw many things other than flowers. Some of these would be considered "gross" but I found them amazing and beautiful and I wanted to share them with you. The first picture shows the field that we had to walk across to get to the forest. That is where the fun begins.

Just as we entered the forest , looking down on the path was a special little package left by a wild animal, perhaps a fox. The slugs were having a feast.

Slugs, slugs everywhere!!!

The slugs are so popular in this woods even the plants are trying to be slugs. This next picture was for real.

Then there were slugs with homes ( snails) .

I saw a baby praying mantis on one of my favorite wild flowers.

I saved the best for last. When I walk in the woods , it is often like a botanist, with my head down looking for wildflowers but that day I suddenly heard a bird overhead and looked up and was startled by what was hanging from the branch in front of me. It was like a scene from blair witch project.

There you have it the first installment of grossology 101.

Comments

[tamara]

I don't know how I feel about these pictures. I like the one with the snail on the leaves. xoxox

[Annie]

Yuck! What is that last one?

slugs reaaaally gross me out, thanks! ;)

[Lorie M.]

Well now, I guess you take the good with the bad in nature, don't we? I would concur on the gross-ish quality here!

[rebekah]

at least, if you don't appreciate the "gross" ones, they certainly provide a nice contrast and make the others seem even more beautiful!

[mayalu]

What a fun post...my kids are the slug pickers in our garden...it was nice to look at them without wondering how much they'd just eaten! curious about that wild last picture...

[Linnea]

You certainly did gross me out :o) hahahaha, and especially with the last picture. I looked at it, and was like 'what the heck, is that something dead in the tree' and then I enlarged it, and my question was answered. Yech! (but once again, I always learn something new :o) ) Take care! Linnea

[cathygaubert]

not gross, but interesting. well, the last one was a bit ick, and what exactly is it? i think i would have definitely had to take a few steps back after coming across that little surprise!

[Emily D]

lovely lovely. i am in love with bugs of all shapes, sizes and varying beauties. i love the photos. i am going to go out and take some photos right now.. inspired by that. love emily

[Elsita :)]

Wow Margie!
All I can say is that if you gave me a camera and put me in that same place where you were I would take the same pictures that you took! I am fascinated by nature and even the gross part of it is something that I appreciate because something gross saved my life once. It was in the country side in Cuba. I was with my then boyfriend visiting his grandma who was so extremely poor, even more poor than we both were at the time. It was raining so much and we didn't have anything to eat. I am talking about starvation, like when you haven't eaten anything for three days. My boyfriend and I went out in the middle of the rain to see if we could find something to eat and all we found was a death owl. PLEASE DEAR READER DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE TOO SENSITIVE! So, then we took the owl to grandma's home and she cooked it the best she could for the three of us and we ate it. The owl had died because of the extreme rain. At that point I could not think about gross or anything like that but only about survival. I started telling this story to Bill once and I couldn't finish it but now that I wrote it here you can use it for the next episode of the Grossology series!

I apologize if someone gets offended by this story but it is something as real as I am and I really hope that nobody has to experience something like this again!!!