Even the ditches in front of the houses on our street are full of life! If you look closely at this picture, you can see lots of tadpoles... Elena also found a strange slug-like thing living in the water. Here's a close up look:
It turns out these are Dytiscid Larvae, which is a local diving beetle! As strange as they look now, they will grow up to be beetles and help control the mosquito population. Elena has taken it upon herself to save these creatures since the ditches tend to dry up pretty quickly in the summer heat (It will be summer-like until probably mid-December around here!). Anyway, she had the garden hose out yesterday filling up the ditches, in hopes of maintaining the "ponds" long enough for the beetles to emerge as adults.
Here's Elena bringing another jar full of water out to the ditch... It rained briefly today, so we didn't need to make extra trips this afternoon.
My future ecologist, Elena, making faces at the camera :)
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