A walk at the arboretum today, after weeks of putting it off due to ice, snow, frigid temperatures, flu, colds. Because it’s been so cold, not much has happened, visibly, since last time we were there, but soon there will be lots of wildflowers. The ground is grey and muddy from the recent intentional burns and the heavy rains we had last week. This is the slowest spring in my memory, but I may prove myself wrong when I look back through the records.

We met this fellow, a crawfish, walking along the gravel path. It wasn’t quite 40 degrees out and we wondered what he was doing out. When I knelt down to see him better, he squared off facing me and raised his claws defensively. Dennis reasoned out that he was a burrowing crawfish (Cambarus diogenes aka Devil crawfish) who got hydraulic-ed out of his hole by the heavy rains and was trying to make his way back to the mud before he froze. We carried him down to the pond where the spring peepers were singing- he’d been headed that way- and put him on the muddy bank, where he rapidly burrowed back into the mud. Likely a once-in-a-lifetime sight. He dug with his front claws.