Ooooo...you so nasty!

We have our very own Spiderus living on the front porch. You can only know who Spiderus is if you have little kids who watch Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. I couldn't find a picture of the cartoon Spiderus.

Looks like Mary's spider.

My mini-marsh, like every thing else, is bone dry. And cracked open. And sad. But at least some butterflies are enjoying the massive patch of goldenrod growing there.

I had a very nice, long belly-laugh tonight.
Some background: We have not had good luck with pet snails in the girls' fishtanks. Geoff went to the pet store a few weeks ago and bought some cheap little snails, and we decided that if we couldn't keep these guys alive, we would give up on the snails.
Wellllllll...
While putting the girls to bed tonight, I noticed some spots on the inside of Lorelei's fishtank. Oh, man, now what? ! A weird type of algae or creeping water fungus?
Nope. Baby snails. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Geoff bought a pregnant snail.



This is a macro shot of one. Some are no more than minuscule dots, and the largest ones are about half the size of a BB.



Such tiny perfection. I counted 56 such tiny perfections in Lorelei's tank. And that's not counting the two egg sacks hiding behind the filter.
I laughed some more.



Henry the Betta was interested in the little flashing light on my camera.
See the two babies? They are cute.
I laughed a little bit more.

Then we put Isabelle to bed, and as I was feeding Cuter, her Betta, I noticed some spots on the inside of the tank. Yep. That snail had babies, too. I laughed again. I was so tickled...every other snail we have added to the tanks has died within a few days. And now, we have a few hundred immaculately conceived snails. I have some research to do...how does a snail give birth 2 weeks after being removed from the company of other snails? Do they keep the "stuff" inside themselves until they are ready to lay eggs? Eewww.
I have to see if these snails are a native species, because if they aren't releasable, say in the fountain/bird bath, I have to dispose of them. Eewww.

Speaking of long-awaited births....the Cincinnati Zoo's female Indian Rhino Nikki, is due to give birth the week of Christmas this year.
Nikki’s pregnancy is not only the first successful artificially inseminated pregnancy in the endangered Indian rhino, but also the first pregnancy produced in any rhino species using frozen-thawed sperm. Sperm was collected from a male Indian rhino named Himal, living at The Wilds in southeastern Ohio, near Bill and Julie's neck of the woods..
Not to diminish the huge news of this scientific breakthrough, but I had to ask myself:
How do you collect sperm from a male rhino?
Smirking Hooper knows:

"That's a no-brainer. You give him a few back copies of National Geographic and he knocks on the door when he's done."