Our Own Little Zoo

When we moved to Florida almost three years ago, I knew we'd see a lot more wildlife than we did in Maryland, I just had no idea how much or how close to home they would come. It seems that creatures, big and small, quite enjoy our patio area. Even though it is entirely screened-in, they somehow manage to find their way in, whether it be through a tiny hole in the screen or perhaps under one of the two screen doors. Once they are in, especially the lizards, I can tell that all they can think about (with that tiny brain of theirs) is how the heck to get back out. Here's a pictorial synopsis of our visitors (and these are just the ones I've managed to pull the camera out for):

July 2007 - This is called a Basilisk, also known as a Jesus Lizard because it can walk on water and uses only it's two hind legs. We've had many of these types of visitors over the past three years. Not sure if it is the same one or a different one every time. This is one of the first ones, and we named him Frankie. We thought he might have had an injury because, as you can see in the second picture, he appears to have something red on his face - maybe he just has big red lips.

Frankie hung out for about a week but then managed to find his way out. In April of 2008, we were visited by a squirrel. Luckily it was only on the outside, it would have caused quite a havoc if he managed to find his way inside. I know, squirrels aren't all that interesting, but I thought it was funny how he could stretch out vertically on our screen so I took a picture:

In May 2009 we had a visit from one of our snake friends. It's not uncommon for us to find a snake on our patio. We've probably had at least 5 since we moved in. Jeff is in charge of getting rid of the snakes, I run the other way.
Around that same time, we met our new frog friend. Jeff was a little freaked out by this one for some reason. I thought he was rather cute.

Just recently we had a visit from one fo Frankie's cousins:
This was just a sampling of the creatures we have seen. Jeff had been tracking them with the video camera. I wanted to upload the video but I was having issues trying to transfer the video to digital format. If I ever get around to it, the video includes a raccoon (on the outside of the screen), a few snakes, and a duck that managed to walk from one of the screen (on the outside) to the other. Riley went bananas when he saw that one. Luckily we haven't had any armadillos, which are quite common in our neighborhood. Not sure what else could end up back there but I'll be sure to post if there are any more interesting creatures. Who needs to visit the zoo when you can just look out the window!