Caterpillars and Spiders(Monster spiders)

Friday after school we were walking home from getting Megan from the school bus, Megan saw this cool looking Caterpillar on the bridge railing. We walked home grabbed the camera and walked back. This is our fun little orange Caterpillar. Megan wanted to keep it as a pet but we decided that it would be better if it could get it's own food because it knows what it eats. Megan didn't want it to die in her care.

It had these really cool black spikes sticking out of it in a couple spots on the back, then it had these long white hairs all around it's body and they were very long.
The girls having fun watching the caterpillar.
Kaylee touching the caterpillar. It's a miracle. If any of you know Kaylee she is usually so scared of any living creeping, crawling creature. Dogs, Cats, Horses, Goats, flies, gnats, spiders, specks of dust that possibly look like it might be a little bug.

I have to say though that lately she has been so very brave and has been touching different bugs. Here she is touching the caterpillar. The other thing she loves to touch lately are slugs. We have a gazillion slugs where we live and they are of all shapes and sizes. We have had some that are about 1-2 inches around and about 5 or more inches long(when it is oozing along). We had one get in our house in the basement through the window(don't know how that was possible), we put it on a wet paper towel and watched it. The girls loved it.

Elizabeth loves to walk around when we are outside looking for "lugs". I love how she says it and everything becomes a slug-dead leaves, dirt, nothing-I'm just thrilled that Kaylee isn't screaming when she sees it and runs far away.

Now on to the spiders. We have a million spiders where we live and they love the trees especially and we have tons of trees right around our house. Scott sprays everywhere on the outside and inside of the house to kill the spiders but it hasn't helped this year. They get to be gigantic.

Elizabeth calls them "monster spiders" and loves to watch them. We've adopted about 7 or more that we have to check on as we walk Megan to the bus and back each day. In the morning there is usually dew drops or it has sprinkled in the night and all the spider webs have dew drops on them and the girls love finding them(not very hard, just open your door and there are a bunch right in your face), they think they are so pretty.

One spider was on our front window last fall and we watched it everyday to see how it was growing. It started out pretty small and then was gigantic in just a couple weeks. The girls loved watching it eat and respin it's web. We have another one in that same spot this year and one out our kitchen window. The one on the kitchen window is the picture I have here. It doesn't look as big as it really is. It's hard getting a picture of a spider on glass when the trees and sun are reflecting in the window.
This is a closeup of the spider. That's from the outside of the house and like I said it reflects the trees really well.