Bobcats

One of two bobcats whose snarling and howling yesterday
got me out of my office grabbing my camera.

We've had a lot of bobcat sightings the last month or so. Different bobcats have been walking through yards and driveways. One big one was scratching its front paws on our gum tree by the house. Yesterday, a couple of young ones were wandering below our house.  Shari put out a tub of water in case they were thirsty.

"The bobcat is a medium-size cat weighing 12 to 30 pounds with an average adult length of 2 to 2.5 feet. Bobcats are timid and typically avoid human contact, but do not let their relatively small size fool you. They are tremendously strong and can bring down a small deer. They can become ferocious when challenged, so never approach a bobcat."

Last year I was trimming bush below the house when I saw a bobcat passing below me.  It didn't seem to be bothered by me. The cat was looking for food.

Photo courtesy of our neighbors, Randy & Sandy, who
write, "We have been seeing them every couple of months
and believe they were fighting outside our window last week.
Also been seeing the coyotes and javelinas a lot.
Watch out for the rattlesnakes.
They will be out soon and please don't kill them."

I have read that bobcats are more fussy eaters than, say, coyotes. Bobcats like rabbits. Over the course of several long minutes, this bobcat traversed the gully below me, then up the slope where a rabbit was munching on a cactus. I was hoping to witness a kill (sorry, Mr. Rabbit), but the rabbit disappeared and the bobcat continued traversing down the other slope on the west of our house.

Several times these past couple of months, we've been sitting in the front of our house, watching the cactus grow, when we spotted a bobcat. It's a trick to keep the dogs from barking, much less running out and tempting the gourmet sensitivities of a wild and very capable hunter.

Usually, by the time you get your camera, you get a shot of the cat's backside. In 2007, howling and snarling sounds from the back of the house were from two bobcats in the pine tree. Maybe they had slept there. I got video of them climbing down the tree.

The Shed

It's done, if not completed.

It's done because we've loaded it up with storage. At Shari's urging, emptying our rental storage unit was accomplished in a couple of hours courtesy of a U-Haul rental. To our pleasant surprise, there was extra room so we played musical shelves with all sorts of items stored in the garage, cluttering Shari's small studio, and leaning against the wall in the backyard outside our bedroom.

It's never complete because nothing ever is. The door needs to be painted so it disappears in the same color.  The roof is questionable. There's landscaping to further hide/blend matters.  Brick and concrete pavers need to be reset so they slope in a reasonably even fashion away from the house.

Come March 15, the traditional end of risk of freeze, something almost unimaginable as we are experiencing highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's, we can plant some trees to further hide things and take advantage of the water that collects in the little gully in front of the shed.

Sheds

Terra Bella shed, by the pumphouse.

It's becoming a pattern. Each house Shari and I have purchased, I built a shed.

The first two were on Whidbey Island and they served primarily as houses for lawn mowers and other garden equipment.

The one on Terra Bella was big and housed Scottie, the tractor-mower. It had a ramp and double doors for access, and lots of room for two tillers (large and small), chainsaws (large and small), weed whackers, pressure washers, and various other garden tools necessary to maintain order on five acres.

The small Dunlap shed on one end of the back deck.

The Dunlap house by Freeland also has a lawn, but nothing a push mower couldn't handle. So the required shed was on a much smaller scale, just wide enough for the mower and a few garden implements.

Now I am building a shed at the San Simeon house. It will not be a home for any lawn mower. I took out the last vestiges of lawn a couple of years ago. We still have a lot of stuff parked in a dust-infested storage unit. There is furniture and second kitchen stuff that we hope to use in a guest casita we would like to build when we get rich and famous. We still have boxes of papers and winter clothes that we pack away with the changing seasons. And I still have a pressure washer and chainsaw, although both are electric and not two-stroke engines.

Work in progress, the 8x16 foot San Simeon shed.

Of course, it takes me five times as long to do as half as much, and then I have to redo a lot of work. I design as I go because I can't think very far ahead. The foundation wasn't completely square and when I decided to extend it to sixteen instead of twelve feet wide, the add-on four feet is at a bit of an angle compared to the rest. So the floor isn't completely even, but hey, it's a shed, not a pool table. I'm more concerned about keeping rain and little critters out.

With the good help of Ken, our generous neighbor, and Shari, we raised the back wall, plumbed the two side walls, and I'll be darned if it isn't pretty square and vertical.

I'm waiting for my custom door to be delivered and then I will finish the last wall and the roof. Inshallah, we will be able to vacate our storage unit by the end of this month.

Thank God we are in a dry spell of winter because all that particle board would warp and disintegrate in rain. And we do get rain here, although we've been in the eighties the last couple of days.

Merry Christmas, 2011!

Sanctus Desertus (Desert Saint)

Merry Christmas and very best wishes to all as we celebrate the rebirth of another round of seasons with yet another new year!

Days are getting longer, but it's still too cold and inclement to do much outside. It's a time to rest, dream, plan and burn fires. Even more valuable, it's a time to simply be and observe, even as we are active and celebrate.

The little critters know this well. Our reptile siblings have been here a lot longer than we hair-covered thought forms. They are resting within Mother Earth in the bliss and fulness of the emptiness between dreams of insects and hawks.

The collard lizard is among the saints of the desert. Shari chose this little critter to express a little whimsey amidst the retail bustle and Christmas hype. Christmas is within, and that's where humble critters reside.

May we all know the peace and empathy that we call Christmas, or winter solstice, Saturnalia, or whatever! The days are getting longer and soon they will be warmer when our friends, the desert saints, will be emerging to enjoy their busy little lives.

Winter Season

I forgot we had winter in Tucson. Our three-digit summer weather extended well into September, then in the space of a weekend, the weather skipped autumn and became winter. As new as we are to the Old Pueblo, we got used to walking barefoot in our underwear. It took some time to remember why I had sweaters, thick socks, and space heaters. I realized I had to wear them.

It's a continental climate, so there is considerable variation between summer and winter. Even in winter, there is considerable variation between day and night. That means even though we get sunshine and, in the afternoon, warm weather, it can be really cold at sunrise.

Unusual morning fog so thick we could not see
any neighboring house

By Lower Alaskan standards, it's a summer. We recently had a friend from Seattle stay a few days and I felt a little bad because we've had rain here. Actually, we've had a pretty wet December. For the desert it's great, and for locals it's an exciting and different treat, but I felt badly that our friend flew all that distance and got rewarded with two and a half days of rain out of five. He, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed Tucson as a welcome change from the cold, dark, damp weather of Lower Alaska. It's all relative.

We have more guests lined up to stay with us this winter, so I feel obligated to make full disclosure: warning, it can get cold and wet in Baja Arizona.

Bring warm clothes and be prepared for the frustration of tepid air and ever present desert dust stirred by heat exchange systems that work better as air conditioners and are far less satisfying as central heating systems. (Flow one way cools; flow the other way heats, sort of.) Fireplaces here don't work a damn. No inserts, so all the heat goes up the chimney and soot somehow ends up in the room. Rain falls off roofs at random and the guys who put in the concrete apron around our pool didn't bother to worry about water coming under the back doors.  People here can learn a lot about dealing with cold and rain from Lower Alaska.

But also be prepared to enjoy the smell of the desert in rain. If you are lucky, you will see water flowing in the nearby Rillito River. Ordinarily, it's a dry wash filled with sand. Be fascinated by winds that tear branches, and clouds that hide surrounding mountains. Be amazed at how clear the mountains can be, dusted with snow after the cold clouds lift with the heat of the day.

Scorpio

Funny how modern life is oblivious to creatures that have inspired humans for millennia. People have associated creatures with knowledge, water, moods, fertility and . . . you name it. They weren't just pests; they were tied in with consciousness, including our own. Scorpions, for example, were borrowed to represent one of the twelve archetypes of the zodiac.

We saw our first scorpion in the garage not long after we first moved in. It was my very first. There are no scorpions in Puget Sound, and I don't remember any in Sydney. We killed it and worried about more. Then we found a dead scorpion in the house upon our return after summer on Whidbey. We put it in a jar as a curiosity. Then there was the time Shari blithely picked up a live scorpion in our bedroom closet, like a piece of yarn. She quickly realized her mistake. The scorpion was sluggish. We killed it. A couple of mornings ago, as I was playing solitaire in the living room, a little scorpion dashed across in front of me. I killed it.

But the biggest fellow we ever saw was in the backyard; almost five inches long. It was still alive, but clearly its best days were past. I got some video of it moving, but soon it fell over on its back and that's how it died.

They say the little ones are more poisonous. It was a little one that bit me on a small toe. I didn't realize it at the time. For about a day I thought I had a small, slightly burning sliver in my toe. Then it went away. A couple of days later I found the little scorpion in the dining room, dead. I had stepped on it in my bare feet.

So this is why we fear scorpions? If my personal experience is representative, they are on the same level as honey bees and wasps.

Migration North to South

Evening sun on the south side.

I'm still a snowbird. It's just that I no longer migrate from Whidbey Island to the Old Pueblo. I go from the north side to the south side of the house.

The swimming pool is on the north side. In the summers, there's shade by the house and mornings and evenings to spend in the pool. Meanwhile, the sun on the south side makes stucco and brick radiate heat like an oven. But come the cooler temperatures of autumn and winter, the sun on the south side is where this warm-blooded lizard likes to sit and enjoy the heat

I put my feet up, watch the saguaros and the mesquite trees grow, listen to classical Persian music on my portable music & internet radio device, drink my favorite beverage, and wonder whether I want to trim more agave leaves now or mañana.

See, I'm wearing clothes and socks. We do have seasons. We don't have so much of the brilliant autumn colors of leaves turning orange and red. We just have the same palette of colors in the sunlight.

Why, a couple of weeks ago we had rain overnight. The temperature dropped and when the sun came out, the clouds lifted to reveal the foothills of the Catalina Mountains dusted with snow.

We are getting little snowbird visitors from the north: brilliant yellow finches among them. I wish I was fast enough to take pictures. One morning about a week ago there were about eight sitting on branches by the side of our San Simeon street.