Lytle Ranch Excursions

First of all, Congratulations! to Steen and Katie for their new baby, Natalie.

Now:
Twice in the last month or so I have gone on collecting trips to Lytle Ranch in Southern Utah. I went with some other people in my lab mainly in search of a rare grasshopper-like insect. The sad part is we did not find a single specimen. But it was still fun to go and we did find lots of other things. It was also nice, because Ruth got to come with on the second trip and relax while I went out in search of bugs.

Lytle Ranch is a former ranch that BYU owns and keeps as a nature reserve and field research station. It is located in the far SW corner of Utah:

View Lytle Ranch in a larger map

We spent our time wandering around the whole area looking.

Here are some of the insects we found:
Some beetles

Pygmy Grasshoppers

Toad Bugs (notice the eyes)

There were also lots of other great animals:
This is a gopher or bull snake


Some lizards: a leopard lizard and zebra-tail

And we saw a nest on the side of a cliff with baby hawks.

And we even brought home a pet called a Solifuge or Sun Spider, though they are not spiders, but a different group of arachnid that has no venom. He lived for awhile in the bug house Scott and Emily gave me for Christmas from Japan (he is out in front). He was cute. Now a lizard lives there and that story is for another day.

Happy Mother's Day

We just wanted to tell all the mothers we know:
Happy Mother's Day!,
especially to our own mothers. We love you both.

As a side note: we have a new mother in our home...not Ruth but one of our roaches. She gave birth to a few dozen little roaches, and the mother is doing fine.