Yesterday, on our nation’s Labor Day holiday, we walked down to the local park to let the kids burn off their perpetual energy.  I must say that it turned out to be quite the experience, especially where bugs are concerned.

Both my children are monkeys. They climb everything with ease.

I was walking leisurely along with the Hunt-ster by my side and I turned back to see where the rest of the fam was in catching up to me.  S was standing with her foot poised over what I thought was just a very large leaf.

VERY.  Large.  Leaf.

She kept insisting she was going to squish it and I couldn’t imagine why she would want to squish a leaf, but hey, she’s two.  That’s quite an imagination she has going on there.

C-r-u-n-c-h.

That was no leaf.  Look at the bug in the below picture – this was the one just like it that was encountered on our way back home.  Just like it – only HALF the size.  Yes, the bug S squished so gruesomely was DOUBLE the size of this one.

HUGE.

I’ll spare you the neon-colored details of its insides.

Mutant grasshopper

We play, we swing, we lounge in the humidity of an average afternoon here in the South, then venture on home.

We encountered not small spiders, oh nooooo….because mutant insects are the theme of the day ’round these parts.

Monster spider - he was actually twirling a bug into its web-by casket. This was on the bridge over to the park.

Not overly mutant...but interesting none-the-less. Kids enjoyed it.

We were all exhausted upon arriving home.  But none more so than Huntley.  He literally laid with his face in the water bowl.

Lazy drinker