Feature Creature – Water Strider Traditional Geocache
Belfrypotters: The trail is now open and the wasps are gone, but unfortunately so is the cache. Again.
Feature Creature – Water Strider
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Wabamun Lake Provincial Park
If you look down from this bridge in the summer you will usually see water striders darting about on the stream below. Water striders, also called pond skaters, always make you wonder how they can walk on water, making only small indentations in the surface where their feet touch. It’s those feet that are the secret – they have fine, waxy little hairs on the bottom that keep the animal supported without breaking the water’s surface tension.
Water striders are predators, feeding mostly on aquatic insects such as mosquito larvae, but occasionally leaping up to catch small flying insects. When they catch a prey animal they use their mouthparts to inject it with a digestive enzyme. The enzyme liquefies its internal organs, making it easier for the water strider to suck out the body contents, leaving only the outer shell behind.
In autumn water striders submerge and make their way to the bottom of the stream or pond and find a suitable stone under which they over-winter, emerging again shortly after the ice is gone in the spring.
The cache is a small Lock & Lock, with room for only small trade items. It is stocked with “bug” things, but no need to follow the theme.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)