Salamanders, baby birds and bugs

For those of you who have witnessed me do the freak-out scream-y dance when a bug lands on me, you know that I'm not a fan of bugs. It's involuntary, but I'm trying to control my ridiculous tendency to scream or flail about when I find a bug on my person. It's embarrassing. I also don't want to pass on my fear of bugs and creepy crawlies to the kids.

Digging in the garden isn't bad, if I have gloves on or I don't touch the dirt (and worms and slugs) with my bare hands. A garden tool will suffice when gloves are unavailable.

Yesterday we found a salamander in our kiddie pool, very exciting! I love salamanders, frogs, turtles... but I'm still scared to touch them. So lame, I know. I'm working on it. At least I got the girls to touch the salamander, they weren't scared. My girls are so brave!!

As cute as the salamander was, and even though I wanted the girls to not be scared of it, all I kept thinking was "do salamanders bite? I hope it doesn't bite them... I don't think they can bite..."

Ember's stickered hand petting Mr. Salamander.

Amelia trying to get the salamander out of the pool.

Could he be any cuter????

I also found some beautiful blue egg shells in our front garden a few weeks ago. They don't fit into the creepy "I'm scared of it" category, but they do fit into a nature category so I thought I would post a picture of those too. We haven't been able to find a nest anywhere, but it was fun to read up about birds and eggs. I've never been fortunate enough to find intact bird eggs, so this was a special treat.

So delicate and the color is exquisite!

And since we are on the topic of bugs etc, and I've been doing more gardening... I'll ask the question that gardeners have been asking for years: Why don't slugs eat dandilions??