Earthworms in the Garden?

So, tonight was quite the night. Alicia went to work this evening and I guess earlier, before I got home from work, Ruby had fallen on a pole that went into her mouth and she was hurt pretty badly and was crying when I got home. She pretty much cried for about 2 hours straight, despite my efforts to calm her down, so I decided to do the manly thing and go outside to get away. :)

I decided since I needed to mow the lawn anyway, I may as well get it out and get started. Since we have 1/3 of an acre of land there, it is quite the tedious task. I didn't get a picture of the grass, but in some places it was probably about 2 feet tall. I was excited to mow because we "wood chipped" the trees last week and I could now mow a part of our lawn that we haven't seen in almost 4 months.

So off I went, but before I tell you what happened, I have to premise it with something the girls have been doing lately.

The girls love Earthworms.

That's right. Earthworms. In fact it reminded of me when I was in Kindergarten at Helen Marie Smith in Las Vegas. At the end of the playground was a gutter where as children we would find earthworms and throw them at the girls. I mean, what better way to spend recess right?

Anyway, I have been weeding recently to prep the yard a little and make the landscaping look a little better. For the past two weeks in doing this, I have unearthed a ton of earthworms (some about a dime thick and about 6-10 inches long, probably some of the biggest I have ever seen). The girls fight over them and each want their own to take to the flower garden to bury in the ground so they can live. But before doing so, they have to play with them for an unknown amount of time, and to be honest I am not 100% sure how many ever actually make it to the garden.

So as I was mowing this evening, I almost ran over a snake. Yup, a snake. It was similar to the one I saw last year but much smaller by about a foot. So as it slid across the grass to escape the jaws of my lawn mower, I actually ventured a small effort to catch it. Catch it I did, and what happened next I had no idea would happen.

The girls were giddy with excitement. They were across the yard, and I held up my prize to let them see. They began showering me with screams and accolades and ran through the tall part of the grass to see what they proceeded to explain to each other was the biggest earthworm Daddy had ever unearthed. :)

Hannah finally in seeing it up close noticed that it was indeed a snake, and Ruby caught on as well, so they all got to touch the snake and Hannah got the camera to take some pictures. Poor Katy was struggling running through the grass since some of it was as tall as her, but when she finally made it her eyes lit up and she began to get so excited and wanted to hold the "Earthworm". I let her touch it, but she was so sad that daddy wouldn't give it to her and let her bury it in the garden. I think she probably cried for about 20 minutes!

I still didn't get through to her that what we had found was a snake, and though she really could have held it since it was perfectly harmless, it was still rather big and probably would have escaped very easily. I threw it in the ditch to be rid of it for the time being and the girls watched in wander for some time while I continued to mow.

While the other girls went inside, Katy went and grabbed a small stroller for her dolls and followed me around the sidewalk mimicking me. Every time I pushed, pulled, or turned the lawn mower, she amazingly did the exact same thing with her stroller. So it was fun spending the rest of the evening with her "helping" daddy with the mowing. I mean if you look at the sidewalk, there are no weeds or anything, so she did a great job!

Oh what a night!