Scary critter in the grass

This is the scariest thing I’ve EVER seen and I hope somebody can tell me what it is! You’ll never even believe where we saw this … right by the lake right by our house! I couldn’t even believe that something like this could live this close to me and I’ve never even seen it before. I don’t know what it is and I hope somebody who is reading this can tell me what it is and what its purpose is because from what I saw of it, it’s like totally useless!

Mom and Mattie and I were taking our usual walk down by the lake a few days ago and I was sniffing around the trees trying to find out where the silly squirrels were hiding and Mattie was looking for frogs in the weeds by the lake when suddenly Mattie started barking so loud! I didn’t pay much attention at first because that silly Mattie sometimes starts barking at just nothing … but this time she didn’t stop barking and she sounded very fierce. Mom was looking at the grass by the lake and then she told me to come over and look at what Mattie had found. At first I didn’t see anything and I got really close to it before I even saw it because it was just sitting there and it looked almost like a rock … then it moved its head a little bit and suddenly I saw it even had legs! I started barking and barking and I could feel the hair stand up on my back because I was so excited and I have to admit I was even a little scared! Mattie kept barking too and finally the rock-like thing started moving its legs even more and then it actually started to walk! That made me get really scared and I turned around and ran the other way! Mom was laughing at me and she said she thought I was a lot braver than that … but I was just so scared, MOM! You shouldn’t laugh at me when I’m scared of something! The rock started crawling towards the weeds and suddenly it was gone! Mattie kept wanting to run after it but mom wouldn’t let her get too close to it … (so I’m sure I was right to be scared if mom wouldn’t even let Mattie get up to it) … then I started sniffing the grass where the rock had been sitting and it smelled like nothing I had ever smelled before. I don’t know what that was!  I was still feeling real scared so everytime a leaf or a blade of grass would move, I would just about jump out of my skin … of course that made mom laugh at me even more.  (Big meanie mom)  Mom teased me all night about that walking rock thing and even tonight when I asked her to write in my blark to see if anyone knows what that thing was, she laughed at me again!

So if anybody, human or dog, knows what that critter is, please let me know. I want to look it up in Wikipedia and find out what to do next time I see something like that crawling around in the grass. 

(bow) Wow, I just got all worked up again just thinking about that experience, so I’m pretty sure I need a chicken stick to calm my nerves … hurry up, mom, it’s not good for Doxies to have a nervous breakdown!