Our first night down in the LRGV, we decided to explore the property of the AirBNB we stayed at, being tired from the 8 hour drive. I'm so glad we did as I found so my lifers on this property and single night alone! I am very appreciative of the Darling family keeping this piece of land 'wild' and native.

Rough Greensnake catching an orbweaver spider. It got close to the web and then stayed there for what felt like 10 minutes (not sure it was waiting to figure out how to catch the spider or because I had disturbed it). After a while, it finally caught the spider and seemed to have no trouble eating it. My first time seeing a wild snake catch its prey!

The presence of solifuges in Lampedusa island (Strait of Sicily) has been discovered for the first time in 1956. Since then, no more findings occurred until recently, when after a targeted search we were able to rediscover e redefine the identity of Lampedusa' solifuges and give a first assessment on their ecological preferences.
The results were just published on the European Zoological Journal:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325082994_Rediscovery_of_the_enigmatic_solifuges_Arachnida_Solifugae_at_Lampedusa_Island_Italy

(Larger, darker snake) My mom texted me a photo of two snakes she found hanging out together while she was watering plants. ~3.5 hours later, they were still in the same area and I took some more photos. Sometimes the larger snake would move away a foot or two, and eventually the smaller one would slither over to it again. (will create a duplicate post for the other snake)

OK wow. The big spider was fiddling with the rolled-up petal thing for quite a while, before suddenly darting over to the side of her web to nab a fly that had just landed. She returned to the center of the web with it and munched on it for a while before wrapping it up in a silk mummy, which I'd never seen being done before. Really cool how she hung on with a couple legs and wrapped with the others. The smaller male spider came forward and seemed interested in the prey situation, but didn't get too close.