Crayfish in Hubble Creek

Hubble Creek is a small creek that runs through the edge of town in Jackson, MO and, except in the driest of conditions, always has a small flow of water with a few pools where water may be as much as three feet deep. There are some small bluegill and sunfish, plenty of minnows and crayfish. Matthew and Jonathan have been begging to go catch them since we arrived and were sorely disappointed when we couldn’t manage to do everything the first day. So today, after lunch, we spent a couple of hours wading through the creek to gather a couple dozen crayfish into a five-gallon bucket. I was keeper of the bucket while the boys hunted. We would have gone in the morning, but after a bit of a delay, they started watching Madagascar and didn’t finish that until lunch-time.

After the creek, we went out to Uncle Charlie and Aunt Barb’s for dinner with Grandpa Otto. There, the boys quickly rounded up a dozen large butterflies into their live cage which was pretty full. The swallowtails and monarchs fill the cage much more quickly than the smaller red admirals they’re accustomed to catching. Then it was off to the pond to catch frogs and grasshoppers. Alas, the search for lizards yielded nothing. Two years ago the boys caught a couple of blue-tailed skinks and they still remember that.

Uncle Charlie has a pinball machine upstairs that he turned on late which made it all the more difficult to get them out of the house. After getting a promise to be able to return in the morning, we managed to get them home and into bed.

The land there between the hills looked like a wonderful spot to set up a camera and take some wide-field astrophotography shots, at least if we would turn off or put a lid on the two mercury-vapor lights on the property.