Nature in the Year of Fire and Plague, continued

 Let me say more about our house, which is so perfect for us.

It is located a few miles north of the city limits of Tucson on a cul-de-sac off the Catalina Highway. After about a mile the scattered houses of that highway end, and the road begins climbing steeply, winding its way through stupendous landscapes up to the 9000-foot peak of Mt. Lemmon. 

We have an open porch along the back of our house (facing away from, or "downhill" from, the mountain) and when we sit on the chairs along the porch we are overlooking our two acres of land which falls away and down a gently dropping terrain. The vegetation of cholla and palo verde and mesquite is simply what remains of the original Sonoran vegetation, which is the case for most of the other houses along the street with their own expansive backyards. When we first moved in we were slightly disappointed that our land included a lot of open bare earth, whereas other yards were solid impenetrable cacti and low trees. But now I recognize the advantage of our more open yard. There is little in the way of fences, so one person's yard runs into the next without obstruction, and we can see larger wildlife effortlessly enter one end of our yard, and watch it travel on through. Let me describe some of this "larger" wildlife.This is a desert, so animals are always grateful for water. Since we want to attract wildlife, we leave pans of water everywhere around the house. For instance there is a pan and a bird bath just outside the front-room window. We remember the shock one day when we looked out that window and saw two mule deer, appearing as tall as horses, looking back at us from just a few feet away. They were bucks, quite handsome with their antlers still in velvet. Our cat looked out the window at them, very grateful for once to be an indoor cat. 

 Every year now at some point two male Mule Deer have shown up with their antlers in velvet, and usually they hang around for several days to judge by the scat piled up in a distant corner of the yard. We don't know whether it is the same two, or just a coincidence. When one of us spots them approaching we shout "Make sure there's water in the bird bath!"