Leaping Lizards! (or at least frozen still, trying to blend in, and then scurrying quickly away without leaping)
We've got striped lizards here in Arizona, and without spraying any pest control chemicals, my backyard has a wide variety of flora and fauna.
There's at least 3 of these reptiles - 2 of them are male, posturing, doing "push ups" on the top of the fence wall to try and look impressive - who visit / dine in / run about my back yard escape from the encroaching neighborhood.
This lizard reminds me of one of my favorite albumns of my freshman year:
The Dead Milkmen's debut albumn
(pictured to the right)
Here in NV at 5000' in my yard we get several kinds of lizards, scorpians, black widows, rabbits, and occasional snakes. Outside the fence there are a racoon or two, mule deer, and a roving pack of coyotes. Last summer the black bears were coming way down from the mountains due to the drout and a few were captured from a nearby neighborhood and returned.
ReplyDeleteCool. Here in West Phoenix, in the middle of our sub-division (not adjacent to the green space / open space as you've got) the larger critters are limited, but we have the same arachnids, feral tail-less cats, an inflatable 4ft lobster I call Dr.Zyoburg, too damn many neighboring pit bulls whose owners leave them outside constantly, hummingbirds, phoebes, fly catches, king birds, honey bees, finches, sparrows, and fecal-prolific pigeons. Black Bears were spotted down in Tucson recently, and they are on Colbert's "Threat Down" quite often =)
ReplyDeleteAll this is in contrast to my friend Gary's remark that in Chengdu China (where he and I both worked in 99-01), there's no birds, no squirrels, no wild-life other than Pandas at the Panda Preserve. ...but that's another posting I'm working on, for next week.
We get the occasional tagger, a heroin addict or two, and several rednecks in my front yard :)
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