Park After Dark

Once a year the Tohono Chul Park puts on a Park After Dark.  As you can see, there were so many docents holding live reptiles, birds, insects, mammals and anything else found in the Sonoran Desert. Here is a docent holding a Mountain King Snake.

This little snake eats rattlesnakes.

Our friend, Tommy, came with us.  (the boy, not the tortoise.)

Here is Luke with his idol, "Karl the Bugman."  Karl was holding and playing with a scorpion!  Ack!

This Great Horned Owl is missing an eye :(

Elf Owl!  I want to keep him in my pocket!

Bat Lady.

Poor little docile brain damaged bobcat.  The docent was opened for questions and one kid kept asking, "would it eat us because we are meat?" and "could it kill humans?" ....no and no.

Hazel was there touching all of the animals too but I never got a good non blurry picture of her, so here she is eating some animal crackers from earlier that day.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is amazing.  Today makes it three times that we have been there are we still haven't seen everything there is to see.  This indoor and mostly outdoor museum exhibits plants, animals and minerals of the Sonoran Desert.  In the heat today we were only able to explore for a couple of hours.  The restrooms are equipped with sunblock dispensers! Here is a view from one of the paths.

Nature boy.

There are so many different kinds of animals int his desert.

My favorite part of this museum is that along the paths there are volunteers at a little set up table showing an animal to talk about, fossils to show, etc.  Here we were learning about the "boots" in the Saguaros.  Gila woodpeckers build their homes in the cactus and years after the cactus has died and rotted away, the boot, or little woodpecker home, is left.

We also learned from a "table person" about the Mountain King Snakes, Pack Rats, Fish Fossils, and here were are learning about "eyes in front, ready to hunt" and "eyes on the side, run and hide."  Meaning, if an animals' eyes are in front of their skull, they are predators if their eyes are on the sides they are prey.

It is truly a whole other world here.  And speaking of different versions of classic stories, The Three Little Javelinas is a Three Little Pigs story with a Sonoran Desert setting.

The heat was great because there weren't very many people there, but I think we will wait until the weather is cooler before we visit again so that we can stay all day.