We live on a cul-de-sac just off the Catalina Highway. Our acre of fairly untouched desert is on land beginning to rise up towards the 8000 foot peak of Mt. Lemmon. This is in a good position from which to write a nature blog. Just when I'm thinking it's about time to write a blog, I can count on something appropriate to pop up for me to write about.
For instance, once or twice a year mule deer (black-tailed deer) appear in our yard. They don't seem to appear at any particular time of the year (these times over the years: 22 May, 23 June, 22 August, 20 November, 23 November). There might be one deer, there might be several; they might stay one day, they might stay several (in which case they bed down at a distance from our house and pile up droppings), and the one rule is, they are all adult bucks, either in velvet or with enormous racks of antlers. We've never seen a doe. We don't know why they come, or where they come from. We assume they drop down from the higher elevations, but we really don't know.
At any rate one appeared the other day, looking healthy and well fed. As always it's a sudden surprise, and they always look as big as a horse. Of all the animals that occur in our yard, they are the largest and heaviest.
And this one gave me to an opportunity here to speculate about them, and now my blog is written.
To round things off, we then a much smaller creature, one that we had never seen before, and which caused a bit more consternation.
No comments:
Post a Comment