Category Archives: Critters

They were back. I think it’s the cookies. The plastic container with the last of the cookies is covered with tiny bite marks where something’s been trying (unsuccessfully) to get in.

And today I used the iPhone instead of the Canon so that the autofocus was in charge, not me.

Gonna be a long weekend, I think.

As our back yard drops off down the hill to the back yard of the house below us, there are a couple of retaining walls made with railroad ties. By mid-morning these are all exposed to the sun, and they get toasty. They make an ideal place for the lizards to bask, soaking up photons with a quick escape route just over the edge and down into the cracks between the ties.

This dude was living the good life, obsessed with something down the hill. It wasn’t the one that’s missing its tail that I saw a couple days ago – it was there with this dude, about five feet to the right.

Whatever this one was looking at, it had its full attention since he was ignoring me, just four or five feet away. Now, **I** know that I’m not a threat, but generally the lizards don’t and they’re bugging out as soon as I get within about ten feet.

I finally cleared my throat and shuffled my feet a little, and got this nasty side eye look that said, “I know you’re there, don’t you see me ignoring you?!” About that time the shadow of a raven passed over and Lizard Attitude Dude was over the side and gone in a flash.

Maybe he did somehow know that I wasn’t interested in eating him whole, where that raven probably had a different opinion. Life on the edge, with the quick and the snack.

We always have a squirrel around. There are lots of trees on the hill in back of our yard, a big one in our yard itself, many in the neighbors’ yards. We put out a fair amount of food every day for the birds. Trees + food = a squirrel.

Sometimes we see two squirrels. Especially in the spring, chasing each other all over… (insert that deep bass “French-sounding” “uh-Huhn-HUUUHN!” sound here that means “You know that we’re talking about sex now, right?” – is there a word for that sound/phrase/thing?)

Earlier this week there were THREE squirrels out there. It might be the cookies that we’ve been throwing out for them in addition to the bird seed.

They’re all fat and fuzzy, no doubt about it! I grabbed my camera and started shooting…

Only to find out just now that, as fuzzy as the squirrels were, my pictures were even more fuzzy. As in, “badly out of focus.”

This is not an artistic choice, but rather a reminder that, no matter how many tens or even hundreds of thousands of pictures I’ve taken with that camera over the last 20+ years, I still need to make sure I check that the autofocus is engaged if I’ve been shooting pictures of the moon the previous night and had it on manual focus.

The problem is obvious. User error.

When I was a kid we used to catch these guys all the time. Never bothered me.

Their offspring must remember, because here and now, sixty years and a couple thousand miles away, they tend to lie in wait and then fly up into my face and scare the crap out of me.

I hope that the fence lizards feast on them!

I was walking along the backyard sidewalk and saw something moving down by my feet. I glanced down, saw movement, and managed at the last second to shift my foot so I didn’t come down on top of this dude.

I stopped, I froze, it froze, and I expected the lizard to hit Mach 2 getting away from me. Nope, he just sat there for the longest time. Long enough for me to get out my phone, get it turned on, bring up the camera app, lean over, and snap off a few photos. Still no movement by my lizard pal.

No pushups, no movement, no nothing. But it’s missing most of it’s tail, so things have been tough at some point quite recently.

It occurred to me that its pinhead-sized brain was figuring this was it, the big one, that last fatal mistake. It had zigged when it should have zagged and now that ginormous creature hovering above it just inches away (i.e., me) was going to just devour it in one swell foop. It was just hoping that the finale would be quick and painless.

But what do we say to the god of Death? “Not today!” I wasn’t feeling much like eating live lizards, and I was feeling sorry for this little dude who might the the one I saw last week in this same part of the yard – so I just walked away.

Regrow that tail in peace, live long, and prosper my medium-sized lizard compadre!

It’s been getting warmer and we’ve had several days in a row in the low 80’s. While I’ve seen little skittering motions out of the corner of my eye once or twice while strolling through the back yard, today was the first time this year I got a clear view.

Normally I would expect the first fence lizards of the year to be the teeny, tiny, newly hatched “popcorn” lizards (so named because they’re basically just light snacks for the birds, bigger lizards, and other predators). But this dude was pretty good sized.

One of the “blue bellies,” he didn’t retreat when I spooked him, but started doing push-ups to demonstrate his dominance. I refrained from dropping and giving him twenty-five, although I might be able to do it these days.

Something of a “chonky boi,” I’ll keep an eye out for him and if I spot it before I get close enough to disturb it or make it feel threatened, I can turn and take a different route for my walk. The sun really did feel good, and I want to be a good neighbor and/or host.

He also needs to watch out, the fence he was hiding out against separates our yard from the new neighbors, and in particular, their dog, Blanc. I’m waiting to see if Blanc is into chasing tiny reptiles, but I wouldn’t be surprised, and Blanc might have a different idea regarding the role of good neighbor and/or host.