Critters

I just took Jessie out for her evening constitutional and stood out in the yard for a few minutes watching the bats. We’re close to the mountains between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley and almost every evening we’ll get a dozen or so flitting about under the street lights. I love them, they keep down the bugs.

We also have Lester, a peacock, who wanders in and out of the neighborhood, hooting and hollering as peacocks are wont to do. With the Chatsworth Reservoir just to our north we get lots of ducks and geese flying about.

We get plenty of gorgeous red-tail hawks, lots of hummingbirds, some really big turkey vultures, the occasional woodpecker, and the usual assortment of sparrows, crows, mockingbirds, mourning doves, pigeons, and being only twenty miles or so from the ocean, sea gulls.

We also have some big owls – remind me to tell you some time about how the ceiling in our house dripped blooooood when we first moved in.

In our yard we ocasionally see some good-sized lizards (Fred, and now presumably some Descendant of Fred). I’ve seen dead rattlesnakes and other live snakey-type beasts, but I give them some space, so we’ve never been properly introduced.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the family of raccoon living on our roof. Our neighborhood also is the home of skunks (Jessie LOVES playing with them!), opossums, rabbits, coyotes, and once I saw a cougar prowling the neighborhood at night.

I’ve seen deer next to the freeway and all over the place at Pepperdine in Malibu. Finally, as in any urban environment, especially one with a lot of fruit trees, we get lots and lots of squirrels andrats.

I have had conversations with friends from the country or back in Vermont who question how I can live someplace so “barren” and devoid of “nature” and “wildlife”.

Except for the absence of moose, I hadn’t noticed a lack of critters, even in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The critters seem to be doing surprisingly well.