螢 - Ying2 - Firefly, Glowworm, Glow

螢火蟲 - Ying2 Huo3 Chong2 - Glow Fire Bug — Firefly

Sharena caught two fireflies! She’s really amazing, I don’t know how she did it, I was blundering around trying to shine a flashlight on them right after they light up, and then slowly closing in on them and grabbing them by tracking their movements. She just yelled “THERE’S ONE!” and slammed her net down and caught one. I thought it was a fluke, but then she did it again! I scooped them up (she doesn’t touch bugs or other icky things) and put them in a jar for her, with holes in the top, to look at in the car on the ride back to Rhode Island.

Other animals caught and released today: Butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, and tiny tiny (dime sized) tree frogs.

土狼 - Tu3 Lang2 - Earth Wolf — Coyote

Earlier Alexis took us to the “jungle” behind her house and told us about all the animals that live there. She said there were snakes that live in holes, and that they say “HISSSSSSSSSSSSSS”… and then they GET YOU. There were also worms, which follow you. Finally she showed us a hollowed out space in a big pile of sticks and other debris and said that’s where the coyote lives. How cute she was, we thought, imagining all these animals in her backyard, just like Mitchell used to. We went inside and told Chris that she took us to the jungle and taught us all about it, and he said “Did she show you where the coyote lives?” We smiled and said yes, she did, she’s very cute. He said “Yeah, I used to hear it at night all the time and one day I saw it come out of the woods and walk around our yard for a while. At first I thought it was a fox because of the bushy tail but then after we noticed the color and the size we realized that it’s a coyote. Since then we’ve seen it a few times. I think that hole is where it lives, I’ve noticed it going inside, it might have some pups in there.” WOW! She wasn’t kidding! And it’s not completely nuts: there are indeed coyotes in Connecticut. Apparently they mostly just eat cats and dogs and generally stay away from people. Cool.