Now that Spring has officially sprung, our classroom, by majority, has moved outdoors. Which of course necessitated a trip to our local Tractor Supply store yesterday to buy new mud boots (yep those are my stylish feet).

After all how else can you go creeking without mud boots??

We walked up and down the creek, me with Gabby on my hip. We couldnt' find mud boots yet in her teeny size. Walking in a shallow creek is so much fun, there are so many discoveries to be made. We saw a frog hop from the side of the bank in to the creek and we saw pond skaters dashing here and there.

And then Alex made an exciting discovery. Honest, I don't know how his eyes spot these things, but he always does. He saw a crayfish, or crawdad if that's what you call then, swimming about on the bottom on the creek admidst some rocks. Felt like old times, him taking off running for the bucket! If you're really good you can pick up a crayfish without it biting you...but we don't know how good we are at that, so we used the bucket to scoop him up. Now, crayfish in some places are good for eatin' and some people use them for bait; but we just like to keep them as pets!

We had caught a crayfish last year, but didn't build the habitat completely right, so the little escape artist got out. So this time, we did some further research, and built it the right way! It was Alex's idea to make a video of him building it so we could share it with you.

Before we made this habitat, we spent a few moments observing the crayfish and reading about them at these sites.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayfish

http://aquariums.suite101.com/article.cfm/keeping_crayfish_as_pets

 Here are some quick facts about crayfish:

- they are freshwater crustaceans (like lobsters), found in ponds, creeks, stream, rivers, any old place where there's freshwater

- they breath through feather-like gills

- commonly crayfish get around 3-4 inches long, but can get much bigger in large bodies of water

- they are camouflaged for protection

- the study of crayfish is called astacology

- crayfish are scavengers (bottom feeders)

- crayfish make great, easy to care for pets

- crayfish are slow moving until they feel threatened; then they'll rocket backwards to escape