It's a good bobcat year

 

Some years we don’t see any.  This year we’ve had two sightings in two days.

 

Saturday I saw the mom and baby while walking in a preserve about a mile from our house.  Yesterday we were walking both dogs in Bentsen Rio Grande State Park.  Judy and I saw the cat at about 50 yards.  Henry saw it.  Annie didn’t.  We all paused to admire each other; except Annie, she was sniffing the ground for food.  When we got up to where the cat had been, Henry got pretty excited sniffing the shrubbery where the cat had slipped into the underbrush.  We held Henry back with the leash as he attempted to follow his prey into the undergrowth.

 

The leash didn’t hold up so well an hour later.  We had stopped to admire a flock of twenty chachalacas feeding on the ground.  Henry watched them as long as he could stand, then suddenly went red-zone and broke the leash right off.  Chachalacas are fun birds to chase.  They’re about the size of chickens.  Irresistible.  Henry blew off into the brush, the happiest puppy on the planet, scattering birds and squirrels everywhere.  He returned to his senses and came back within a minute or so.

 

We stayed and watched the birds a little longer, but the chachalacas and squirrels chose to remain in the trees and scolding Henry until we left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Green Jay

 

Such an elegant bird.

 

But looking this good can’t be easy.

 

 

 

 

 

Out walking in the woods

 

Sometimes a person gets really lucky and sees a bobcat.

 

 

 

Sometimes a person gets really really lucky and sees a bobkitten!

 

 

 

 

Mimi,

 

the Live Steam Engine, doesn’t have any tracks to live on here, but she sits proudly atop a bookshelf in our office,

 

basking in past glories; a time when she steamed around the front yard in Louisville, huffing and chuffing about, entertaining the entire neighborhood,

 

compliments of the generosity of my brother David.

 

Yeaa!

 

Lindsay is back to her pre-baby weight, and I am back to my pre-Thanksgiving Day weight. 

 

Judy has been on a steroid regimen for two weeks for her knee; so she’s just irritated and hungry and won’t say anything about her weight.

 

 

Along the way

 

Another Black Witch Moth.

 

It’s a giant moth; big like a bat.

…or bigger.  A 7 inch wingspan.  It’s the butterfly of death, lost souls, and sometimes it’s the dark sorcerer.

 

…and Nutria; that giant big-as-a-medium-size-dog rodent,

 

…but little baby versions the size of a small bunnyrabbit.

 

Why do you suppose

 

…we plant so much grass on highway medians, then spend so much energy mowing it?  Miles and miles of median being mowed; the clippings blown back into the grass to facilitate even more growth to mow.  That’s a lot of resources in man hours, equipment, and fuel.

 

 

 

It looks nice when it’s done, but is it all for aesthetics?  Habit?  Safety?  Because we can’t think of something else to plant that doesn’t require mowing?