It was Patchy done brought this alligator lizard inside. Out of the corner of my eye I spied her playing with it under a dining room chair, to which I sounded the “Ahhhhhck!” which is the universal cat distress call for “Stop it and drop it!” And she did. The lizard, though freshly minus its …
Our shepherd/border collie mix Ranger never ceases to amaze. A soccer ball that ended up in our yard courtesy the kids next door led to me tossing it in Ranger’s direction Saturday, which revealed her rather amazing and consistent inate ability to “toss†it back to me. I say “inate” because how she immediately and …
Our yard is blessed each year to be frequented by beautiful western tiger swallowtail butterflies. Magnificent specimens who flit, dart, and dodge around and through the spring and summer air in search of nectar. The big bougainvillea beneath one of our backyard palms is a regular stop on their journeys, but they rarely light upon …
What you’re looking at above (click it for the bigger picture) is not something you see everyday, nor the kind of life/death animal action many urban humans get to find themselves so close to. It’s a still from some really bad video I captured, depicting the last moment of a rather epic backyard fig tree …
In reviewing last week’s timelapse footage this morning, I found that my decidedly low-res/tech front steps cam captured the latest visit from our unfriendly neighborhood coyote, this one when it dropped by for about 32 seconds last Thursday morning (July 19; click them for the bigger pictures): I don’t think I’d mind it so much …
Alerted by the telltale “squeeee!” of an angry mockingbird (you can hear in the clip) in the backyard, I scanned the boughs in vicinity and found one of our neighborhood Cooper’s hawks dining rather vigorously in a nearby tree. (As usual, this video was shot with my patented shaky cam technique of holding my Canon …
Crossing paths with a coyote in an urban environment is a brief affair — especially if you go on the offensive rather than the defensive. The last thing a coyote’s ever wanted around me is to get into some sort of stand-off as to who’s the dominant opponent. Mainly because I don’t give it the …
Read more “Of The Coyotes I’ve Encountered This One Had To Have Been The Most Unique”