Post by Allison
What is clear and looks more like dancing water than an animal? Freshwater shrimp! Well, that’s one answer at least—and local ecologists have had their first encounter. During stream monitoring this past summer, restoration ecologists of the Lake County Forest Preserves discovered several dozen Mississippi grass shrimp, Palaemonetes kadiakensis, in a forest preserve along the Des Plaines River in southern Lake County. Due to the fact that you can see right through them, this species is also commonly called glass shrimp. At first sight, the ecologists did not recognize the inch-long crustaceans. It was clear that this find was something rare and exciting.
the Midwestern summer are often the farthest things from our minds. It always amazes me when the weather has been cold for an extended period, then, at the first sign of warmth, insects seem to magically reappear. Where have they been hiding? How did they survive the frigid air that makes me shiver in my sweater when I’m outdoors longer than a few minutes?
Walking through the woods in late fall, everything seems to be settling in—the colors calming to variations of brown, the dull roar of the wind the only sound. That is, until the staccato “cha-cha-cha” 
