Oklahoma and Our Adventures With it's Natural Habitats!

So ever since Benj and I officially moved out to Norman, Oklahoma Benj has carried on his lifelong hobby and passion for what's called "herping". Herp is the technical term for reptiles and amphibians (If you know the Loser family, they are known for housing several different types of animals in their own home over the years, mostly in their window wells of the basement, which are way cool if you ever get to see them) Benj joined an online herp forum in the state of OK, and has gone on a bunch of "herp hunts" in the past few months, to explore the different areas and the herps in them.

We have also gone to several of the different animal refugees throughout the state to see the different types of animals they have (outside of Norman and the Oklahoma City Metro area the state is pretty desolate, leaving plenty of land for huge animal rescue homes and refugees).

And last, of course, Benj cannot be in a home with out his own pets and critters, so he has turned our screened-in porch into a mini zoo, complete with rocks, sand, plants, vines, logs, and pond. When we brought out Benj's animals from home in Utah, we started out with 1 water dragon, two frogs, and one turtle. Since then, we have added the following: 3 box turtles, 2 baby red-eyed slider turtles, a bunch of frogs (they have mostly come and gone, because of how loud they are at night-- I made Benj let them go), 1 tiger salamander, 1 tarantula (this critter did NOT stay long), 1 horny toad (had to let him go; he was my fav!), and 2 water dragons (1 male and 1 female-- but they both died sadly).

Here are some pictures of the animals we've encountered, along with animals we now have in our own home:

This pic was taken on our first animal adventure at the Little River Zoo in Norman, we got to go right up to the kangaroos and feed them.

Benj found the country's largest tiger refuge about 40 minutes away from our home. This place was huge, and I'm sad we didn't get too many pictures, but this place had over 75 lions and tigers, along with grizzly bears, monkeys, snakes, panthers, cheetahs, and alligators as you can see above ^.

For $30 bucks extra (don't know if it was worth THAT much), we got to go on an extended tour or the tigers, and then play with a baby tiger who was just 11 weeks old. Here are the pics of us and Charlie. He was so cute and so fun to play with.

^Here is Benj on another one of his exploring trips of the river beds in Norman, he found a funny looking turtle, and tons of frogs!

^This frog was HUGE! Thank goodness he did not bring this one home..

^These frogs are everywhere in Oklahoma, especially where ever there is water. They make this really loud annoying sound that most people would think is the sound of just a bunch of bugs, but it's actually they frogs.

Here is a pic of Benj's creativity at work.. Be brought home some cactuses and made what he called his own "cactus garden" :)

Here is one of the frogs that we still have in his own tank (because he will eat anything smaller than him). Benj calls him the "Jaba the Hut" frog.. mostly because he's HUGE and fat :)

^Here is another one of our frogs.. It's called a Pac Man frog :)

One night when Benj came home from work he had these two tiny turtles^^ in his hand. He found them crossing the road together, so naturally Benj "rescued" them and brought them home. In Oklahoma, turtles run around EVERYWHERE. Pretty much any kind of pond or body of water will have these turtles in it. During the summer they try to travel from pond to pond and usually get run over by cars. These two are my favorite. The larger one is Skuttles (he's about the size of baseball), and the tiny one is Scooter (he's about the size of quarter).. SO cute!

^ Here you can see just how tiny Scooter is! He had to be only a couple weeks old when Benj found him!

We now have FOUR box turtles that roam the porch. ^Here are two of them.. Benj also found these turtles trying to cross the street. Every time he brings one home, his typical explanation is "I just can't let them get run over!" Haha I think it's cute, but we have so many now!

Here is the original box turtle we started out with, Pene.

Here is what our porch looks like.. I couldn't quite get the entire porch in one shot.. but you can kinda get the idea.

So.. as you can see, we have quite the zoo, but sadly they all have to go! We're moving to another apartment that doesn't have porches or any place we can put these animals, so Benj is trying to find new homes for them, or he may just have to let a bunch of them go. He is sad about this.. but I keep telling him, once we have a home of our own he can most definately build a place for his animals.. OUTSIDE of course! :)