We Love The Stars Too Fondly

It hasn’t been terribly warm yet this spring except for one or two days, but it’s been warm enough to bring the lizards out of their winter hibernation.

They’re climbers and clingers, and the cinder block wall warms up nicely first thing in the morning and then retains the heat all day long.

Up, down, sideways, it doesn’t matter. They’re relatively safe on the wall, hard to grab by a hawk or other bird while they’re vertical and flat against the surface.

They do stand out and are pretty visible against the brick, as opposed to how they were pretty well camoflouged on the bark covering the trunk of the big tree in our back yard at the old West Hills house. Nonetheless, this seems to be a good trade off for them.

They also like to climb up on top where they’re in full sunlight, but in our case that puts them in traffic. Those psycho squirrels run up and down the top of this fence all day long, like they’re drag racing. The psycho squirrels are oblivious to the lizards, but that doesn’t mean that the lizards won’t get run over and knocked off into the abyss. The interactions between the species seem to be coincidental and accidental, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not dangerous for the critter that’s an eighth the size of the high-speed psycho.

As I’ve mentioned, we have squirrels living under the pergola in our back yard. It was about a month after we moved in last summer before the first one showed up, probably coming from over the wall somewhere out where the tumbleweeds, brush, and weeds stretch all the way to Rancho Cucamonga. Then there were two, then three. It really was a big deal (to us!) when I saw five at once out there last weekend.

Today there were more. Many, MANY more.

This guy was out there this morning, along with four of the adults. I’m going strictly on size, but the “adult” squirrels are … squirrel-sized, like the size of a small cat, big bushy tails. This little dude is more like a third that size. My first, immediate thought was that we were experiencing the first day outside for a new litter of baby squirrels (called “kits”).

How many squirrels are typically in a squirrel litter? I don’t know at all (Google says 2 to 4 typically, but some species can do 8 to 15…), but less than a minute later, this one popped up.

Then another.

Then another.

It didn’t take long before the pergola turned into a freakin’ squirrel clown car! All day there were almost always at least five or six kits out frollicking and gallavanting around, climbing, falling, running, eating.

It was tough to get an accurate count because they rarely stopped moving, and they kept creeping around behind the pergola floor and then popping up someplace else, but at one point tonight I could positively ID eight different kits out at once. It could be as many as ten or eleven. We’ll see. Maybe.

Either way, this weekend I was thrilled to see FIVE squirrels at once in the yard – we’re suddenly up to thirteen at a minimum. Our backyard critters have been fruitful and multiplied!!!

The ravens came by to check out what all of the fuss was. By the time I got the camera out they were just up on the wall, but a minute prior to this they were hopping along the edge of the pergola floor and peeking down into the various entrance tunnels into the squirrel den underneath. They’re very obviously aware of where the squirrels are and that there are a gaggle of them that are small enough to carry off. Ravens are opportunists, they prefer road kill and carrion, but if a baby squirrel kit gets careless, well, it’s that whole “Circle of Life” thing. We’ve also got a few hawks around, as well as owls if anyone comes out at night.

Over in the corner, trying to peacefully soak up some sun and minding their own business, the local lizards were watching the kits and thinking that the neighborhood was going to Hell.

We’ll see.