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In the Gloaming

Then and Now

I just thought this was interesting ...

 

Note the person on horseback in the lower right.

 

Not much has changed in 100 years, even the telephone pole tilts the same. They added a wing on the church in back, and the hitching posts are gone of course.

You can't see it too well here, but part of the reinforcing wall on the Haskell steps (bottom center) was knocked down this Spring by a man in an SUV who was going the wrong way on a one way street. I was there moments after it happened.

It would be nice if they restricted Peak's Suburban Addition to equine traffic only.

Jurassic 'Bama

My friend and neighbor, the artist Robert A, sends me interesting emails occasionally.

This is a picture of a giant alligator which was caught outside Leesburg, Alabama.

It is 28 feet long.

The dinosaur analogy is too obvious, and yet I think I have seen skeletons of giant alligator-like creatures found locally at the Dallas Museum of Natural History in Fair Park that make this one look like a remora in comparison.

Gratuitous Texas Wildlife Moment

Afternoon of the Iguana

Continuing the reptile theme for the summer, this afternoon a party developed around the pool as I was sunbathing, and one of my neighbors brought out his iguanadon.

As impassive yet sinister looking animals go, he's nice to have around. Doesn't beg or get into the bean dip. Doesn't do much of anything actually. However I was assured that if a nice juicy cricket or palmetto bug came scampering along, he'd leap into action.

I did have the lingering fear that an unknowing girl would prance up in her bikini and sit on him while he was estavating in the lounge chair, but that never happened.

Also when someone else brought out their turtle, the two seemed to get along just fine. After all, genetic comet survivors gotta stick together when the mammals are playing with WMDs. Might be their big chance! Just lie low and play along and pull out the aces after the big booms subside.

However the point at which he shit in the pool seemed to be when everything went south somehow.

What can I say, some parties you just can't mix.

Reptile Addendum

This Mr. greeted me on the curb as I drove up to work today. Unfortunately the camera didn't focus properly to capture his amazing coloration. He scampered before I could get a second shot.
 

Reptiles Rising

Who is that? Sarah Jessica Parker in a Vivian Westwood, you ask?

No no no no no no.

For whatever reason, the lizards and geckos and anoles (oh my!) are in full flower this season (see below) and I just so happened to have had my camera with me.

This was my favorite, an office gecko using the poinsettia as a hammock in which to sun. Looks fun!

This guy was doing mating display on the handrail at home ... Definitely Mr. Big.

Killer Ducks

Today I was being a bit of a photojournalist working on a story for later in this blog having to do with Dallas history.

It had rained pretty forcefully with lots of thunder and drama an hour or so before, and now the air was thick and humid without being hot, and noticing the bare almost-mist over Turtle Creek, I pulled over and got near the shore and took this elegiac shot:

Immediately afterwards a couple of ducks came at me from over the dale at full waddle and proceeded to chase me away from the shore. I figured I must be near their eggs, so sure, I'd move it along. I was on the phone with my friend Adelina and told her of my predicament.

"Patos!" she said.



It was all cute enough until the white one started nipping at my legs and would not stop. No matter where I went, this duck was on my ass.

Finally, I stopped and sat down and confronted it. What the hell was up?

She'd turn and consult with the red faced duck, quacking away at each other. I picked up a little stick and tapped her back with it and shooed her away ... and the MINUTE my back was turned to go back to the car, she was ON ME AGAIN!



I sat again and looked her in the eye. Ducks are so funny when you are face to face with them. Their intelligence is obvious, so they are well aware of their own absurdity. Anyone who doesn't talk to animals considers this lunacy, but any of God's creatures who doesn't respond to my entreats, in my experience, is probably a psychopath.

Currently I have this problem with the dogs in the dog park. Whenever I get my mail, always two or three dogs of all stripes run up to the street, totally ignoring their masters, almost running into oncoming traffic, because they HAVE to say hi. This never fails. Supposedly evil dogs used to run up to me as a child, giving their owners heart palpitations, but all they did was lick my face.

Wanting to keep the duck now from running into the street, I did everything I could. I threw the stick. I waved her away. I stroked her back and guided her in the other direction. Finally I distracted her enough to get her to turn and consult again with her partner and I got into the car and took off.

All over the back of my legs were welts from where she nipped me. It never hurt, but DAMN. Pretty weird.

When I got home I dabbed them with alcohol just to be smart, then grabbed a dead loaf of sourdough I was about to throw away and tore it into pieces. Back to the pond I went, and the ducks were waiting for me.

Of course, just like anyone else who accosts me in public, all they were after was my bread.

Wild, Wild Life

I was entertaining a client at work and we were out in the parking lot at the end of the day and I said "Look!" and above us about 20 feet a hawk rode a thermal down and came to say hello, then glided on past us and over the field and the hillside. Those birds are huge up close.

Wildlife coming to say hi happens a lot here because we are on a floodplain and when development north of town exploded during the Clinton/Gore Prosperity, the wildlife flushed south and ended up in town where, surprise, there are all sorts of small poodles and people keeping chickens and overflowing garbage cans full of funky forage to exploit.

The mountain lion above was one of two who came to say hi one day. The other went into the bushes before I could snap them together. Sometimes they come to my window licking their chops and staring. Actually they remind you a lot of your housecat, if your housecat was as big as a pitbull.

They had a show about lions on PBS and this maniac guy went out on the veldt and crawled toward a pride of lions armed with nothing more than a roll of toilet paper. Now, this guy was pretty big and meaty. If the lion saw me he'd see nothing but bones and gristle, but this guy had potential. He was the size of Ruben Studdard, and the lion was about as big as one of those cats in "10,000 Years B.C.". They said if the lion decided to bat him, like a kitty bats a bell ball, that his face would come off.

 

Back at my job, we also have coyotes and foxes and owls and giant snapping turtles and black snakes and ... uhhhh ... rabbits and squirrels of course, but nature doesn't just happen here. At home I was sitting on the curb talking with a friend and we were complaining that the birdseed some well meaning resident was putting out had attracted WAY too many birds and now grass wouldn't grow and the cacophony was insane. Right then the whole lawn and trees erupted as if in a vacuum and every bird in 100 cubic feet fled the ground and the trees above in synchronized fractal unison ... chased by a big falcon that swooped in from the live oak across the street. The Bird Lady created an imbalance and Nature counter-balanced. In essence, she laid-out a raptor buffet.

Some people wake up to find their cat or pet rabbit eviscerated in the yard and attribute it to cruel kids or devil worship or Republicans, but most likely it was an owl or other raptor looking for a meal. My previous cat Bagheera came home one night with odd injuries ... his middle was totally ruffed-up bad and one side of his face had all the fur pulled out and a deep teardrop-shaped gouge. After the shock, I started cleaning him up and I thought, "What the hell did you tangle with?" It hit me not too much later that it was probably an owl which swooped down, grabbed his middle and tried to break his neck.

Of course, Bagheera was one mean-ass sonofabitch and most probably gave as good as he got. He was as big as domesticated cats get and had claws like razors and teeth like a serpent. They were dairy-nourished weapons of mass destruction that he sharpened daily with a knife-cutter's skill. Sure enough, a few hours later he meowed to let him back out. I was amazed, but he was out to find that bastard and finish the job.

Most of my experience with animals has been with pets and the semi-domesticated. I've played with lions and bears and raccoons, a Bengal tiger cub, and the usual horses and other livestock. A friend told me a great story about deer. When she was a little girl she and her sister found a fawn in the woods. The fawn permitted them to pet it, and then they heard a twig snap, and they looked up, and they were surrounded by BIG deer. With a child's innate appreciation, they got the message that it was time to go and no one would get hurt.

I think kids understand animals so much better than adults do. I had incredible relationships with dogs and horses as a kid that I cannot begin to have now. I used to be able to be a complete horse-whisperer as a kid. Now they kinda scare me, probably because I'm a lot smarter and have respect for what a spooked horse is capable of, but then I had no fear, so the horses probably picked up on that and had no fear of me either.

My grandfather had a relationship with a horse when he was a kid that stayed with him until the day he died. He and that horse went everywhere together. Once in the winter the horse slipped on the ice and threw him accidentally and gave him a concussion. He woke up to the horse licking his face.

 

I used to hike deep in the woods in the Sierras with my dog(s) as a kid. I think about all the times when we used to go deep-deep-deep in the forest and God knows what bears or wildcats or wolverines we could have run into, but we never did. And this was definitely the country for it. Once in Texas I saw the shadow of something big about 200 feet away on the crest of a forest slope. I froze, but the dog didn't seem to mind it.

Once we hiked pretty far away and came upon a whole section of the forest that had burned down ... destruction for acres. Even as a kid I felt how wrong it was.

Many years later when I was on the radio, a kid went missing with his dogs in the woods and we were part of an all-points-watch, before Amber Alerts. They found him the next day. Basically he went deep in the woods and when it got dark and he got lost, he and the dogs just slept there.

"Weren't you scared to be in the woods in the dark all alone in the cold?" they asked.

"I wasn't alone, I was with my dogs!"

I totally got that, totally.