Category Archives: Critters

We’ve had some sort of gopher or underground critter chewing up the yard for a while, but they seem to have moved on. (The exterminator sent over by the landlord was useless and the gophers moved on despite him, not because of him.)

Now we’ve got something new living under the yard, but instead of leaving huge (3″ or so in diameter) holes and tunnels in the yard, this new “neighbor” seems to be just leaving large piles of dirt with no obvious entry or hole.

There seem to be a new pile every day. The first two are over by the fence and the ice plant, the the next two out in the open.

One day later. The whole area is pretty much covered now.

I’ve looked when I go out around midnight for my final leg stretching lap of the back yard, but I never see the next day’s pile done by then, so the critter’s doing his damage sometime between midnight and sunrise. For the record, I will *NOT* be staying up all night anytime soon to try to catch it in the act and drive a pitchfork into the ground in an effort to impale the little monster. For one, it’s not my house. Sorry, but I’ve informed the landlord, if he wants to have something done about it, the ball’s in his court.

But I am curious, especially by the difference between the holes and tunnels from the old invader and the piles without holes and tunnels from this one. My first assumption is that we’re dealing with different species of critters. Does anyone know what I’m dealing with here?

We are in the middle of a desert, after all.

Following last weekend’s big storm, this guy’s been out there soaking up sun.

Which sounds like a perfectly good way to see the neighborhood from the air as one of those hawks takes you off to be fed to their chicks, but I’m not a rabbit, so what do I know?

I did notice in the most zoomed pictures that there’s a grey bump of some sort on its neck. It almost looks like a stud or something on a collar, but these bunnies are wild. It must be some sort of wart or boil? Maybe that’s why the hawks leave it alone? It might be diseased or tainted?

My wildlife knowledge is barely at Boy Scout levels, and I haven’t been a Boy Scout for about 53 years.

“How are the lizards doing?” I hear you saying. (Well, the voices that I’m hearing in my head are saying something – maybe that’s it, maybe it’s not.) “We haven’t seen them in a while.”

True. One thing I note this year is that it’s been a year or so since I’ve seen them hiding under the card in the driveway. For a couple of years there were often certain lizards who would hid in the shade under the car while still being on that hot concrete. But not this year.

One of the lizards I’ve seen regularly in the back yard this summer is this little dude who is very well camouflaged! Can you even see it in this picture?

There it is! It really blends in.

I spotted it because it ran across the dirt and then froze as I got near. The motion gave it away. If it had just stayed still I would probably have walked right by and not have seen it.

Then it started doing this open mouth pose. Panting because it was trapped in the sun while I was standing there? Or going into a threat mode to scare me off and show me how tough it is?

Could go either way!

Tonight’s visitor when I went out to check on the lawn sprinklers:

Not camoflouged real well up there in the bright light and all alone on the big, off-white, stucco wall.

(Image: Seek app)

The Seek app on the iPhone had no problem identifying it as a White-lined Sphinx moth. While they say these moths “are sometimes referred to as the hummingbird moth because of their bird-like size,” I can guarantee it wasn’t as big as any of the several species of hummingbirds I have in the yard. It’s a big moth, but we’ve seen bigger. (This one from April looks to have been the same species, but it was about 20% to 30% bigger.)

It’s pretty enough though. Just watch out for the mockingbirds! Their nest (now abandoned, as the three little ones fledged while we were in Winnipeg in July) is just a couple feet away.

The second photographic opportunity of July 4th on Tuesday was the reappearance of a few fence lizards in the back yard.

It’s either been cool and foggy, which has them off in their burrows to conserve heat, or it’s been boiling hot, which isn’t any better for them. I’ve seen a few during that Goldilocks period in late afternoon when the sun’s setting, but not many. But the 4th was lovely, and there were several out lounging along the wooden dividers.

This dude wasn’t having any part of me wandering around and took off for the bushes as soon as I showed up. He did stop to do a couple of pushups to show me who was the boss. I notice under his chin there’s a bit of color, more green than blue, but there’s some blue behind his front legs.

Bailing off into the Mexican feather grass he paused for a second to give me the stink eye.

This dude didn’t run, but was heavily into the pushups as a show of dominance. I was suitably impressed and intimidated. I also note that he’s showing some blue shading on his belly, similar to the bigger members of his species in the yard.