Backyard Critters

Another Sunday. And it’s simply gorgeous—calm as a glassy pond, temps rising to the mid-nineties, cloudless skies. We’re so lucky to be living here. The only negative to life in Arizona is the annual threat of fires up north. Right now we have one covering well over a hundred thousand acres with 0% containment. Nature’s broom, sweeping away old stuff to allow new stuff to grow. Regrettably, some humans get in the way, but Nature doesn’t distinguish between tree and man.

I’ve noticed lately that Fred Lizard is back. Well, maybe he never left and I just haven’t seen him. Last evening, we watched him scuttling across the yard, pausing for a few pushups before he finally made it to his home in one of the oleander bushes. He was much bigger than I remembered, almost a foot from tip of tail to nose. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Fred Lizard was one of my characters from Life in the Arbor, the one who dreamed of being a fire-breathing dragon.

And while I’m talking about backyard critters, we now have a pesky woodpecker who found that pounding out his challenges on our metal downspout wasn’t as effective as drilling away on our Direct TV satellite dish. And he loves to do it right around 5:00 in the morning. Nobody I’ve asked knows why woodpeckers do that. Is it a challenge to male rivals or is it a call to area females saying, “Look at me, I’m sooo handsome?”