lizards
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

14::May::2005 20:25 → permalink

Lizards are twice as fat as normal. And twice as slow. Their usual lightning-scurry is replaced by a wheels-spinning shuffle. They are gorging on bugs of which there is a profusion from the relatively abundant rains this winter. This is a dorsal view of an Ornate Tree Lizard (Urosaurus ornatus) that somehow got caught under some foam panels I was moving around. I was unhappy that he was dead. At first I thought he was faking, as I had just seen him alive a few minutes before. He had no apparent damage, and with the colors on his belly — a place you never see when they are alive, I popped him right on the scanner and made a 2400 bpi scan. Both sides. Incredible beast. And such a feeling of the body. Pity he died, though.

And now the Nile Virus season begins.

Fat lizards everywhere, and snakes. Now run across several snakes around the house, one just outside the back door today. And a minuscule rattler out on the Mint Wash trail.

05 2005′, ’14 1638

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