I kicked little animals out into the cold

Over yonder in the yard was a pile of piles which I called The Quarry. It was full of good useful stuff--salvaged bricks, leftover stone—but it looked bad and it sprawled across my best garden real estate. (A new neighbor saw it once and burst out laughing, ‘You said you were a landscape designer?’) Sure, the quarry was a blight, but it was full of potential and had actual dollar value.

It was also habitat. I didn’t realize that until one cold day I started dismantling the pile to sell and donate. I evicted:

An unhappy cold skink rudely awakened from hibernation. Immediately after the photo he and his kin won a vacation at the balmy compost pile.

A miserable leopard gecko. All geckos were compt an upgrade to the crawl space under the house. They share the accommodations again with numerous toads, unphotographed.

Earthworms. (Not pictured: slugs, wood roaches, all sizes)

A little frog. Where did it go?? It jumped, apparently into the ether. I could not find it again to bring it to safety. Remorse.

Since that cold day I began on the quarry, I’ve continued the sorting and dismantling on the occasional warm afternoon. Yesterday I finished! A great swath of future garden has been revealed. I hope the little animals will reposess it.

Corrections

Being wrong is just this quirky little thing I do sometimes.

To set the record straight, the annoying little trees that were next door are not Tree of Heaven/Ailanthus, but Golden Rain Tree/ Koelreuteria paniculata. I want to slander them in exactly the same way (a rose by any other name, huh?). Yes, they have gorgeous flowers but Golden Rain Tree is so invasive. Too many volunteers crowded together in a monoculture, or forcing their way between sidewalk and building, have led me to think they are not attractive or desirable.

And another thing: I thought the Cuban brown anoles and the local green anoles had different ecological niches but now that doesn't seem to be true. Young Cuban brown anoles are scuttling over everything! I hope that this little guy is not the last green anole left in the garden:

By the way, the surprise mystery bloom opened out into a bract of the Golden Spider Lily/ Lycoris aurea. I remember digging some bulbs where a bungalow in my neighborhood was demolished, and the Golden Spider Lily must have been one of them. What joy.

Cuban Invasion in the Brickpile

I began seeing a very zippy brown lizard in nurseries a few years ago. You might never notice it if it stayed put, but it sees you before you see it and skitters dramatically to someplace it considers safe. It is Anolis sagrei, the Cuban brown anole. I assume they came over in plant shipments from Florida. Now I see them flinging themselves around my backyard whenever I go out. Cuban brown anoles are like our green anoles on amphetamines, but of course, brown. Some worry that these little invaders will pressure the green anoles out. But if my backyard is any indication, they prefer different niches.

Green anoles hang out in plants and sometimes on walls. This one likes the Lindheimer muhly grass. They are mellow and into unbroken eye contact. In a good mood, they are bright green with random sprinkling of sky blue scales, and a ring of powdery blue eye shadow which puts me in mind of a truckstop waitress.


Cuban brown anoles hang out in the brick pile and on the driveway, and they don’t mind the construction site which takes up half of the backyard. This one only stopped long enough to get photographed because it hesitated to hurl itself into the dark crawl space.

For more about Brown anoles, there is an interesting article on invasive reptiles in Texas here.

Blue Jay Story

Once when the Mr and I were in the garden at our old house, we heard blue jays raise the alarm. When one jay starts yelling “Steve! Steve!”, every other jay around will show up yelling “Steve!” also. Sometimes what is interesting to all the jays named Steve is interesting to us too, like the time they found a 4’ Texas rat snake along the drainage channel. (Not too dangerous we found out, but very impressive.) This time the yelling was coming from just behind the garage. We went to the corner and looked around.

In the middle of six or so jays was one jay thrashing on the chainlink fence. He’s being mobbed by the others, I thought. Gorgeous blue, turquoise and white feathers were flashing around in a frenzy. Then I saw that its leg was trapped by the fence.

The other birds vanished silently when I went up to the unfortunate one. I thought it would snap his leg in the panic before I grabbed it and closed its wings in my hands. How did it get its leg caught in that little loop? “Go get the bolt cutters, quick!” I told my husband. The moment before he returned with them, I got the loop open by hand and freed the bird. “Go get the kid, quick!” He is not a man who takes orders but he went.


As I held the jay in my hands, the bird seemed at ease. It even sang a little. It sang a soft chortling song, fluid and lovely.


The kid and husband arrived. I knelt to show my son, who was about three then. I opened my hands and the bird flew up like a magic trick.




Photo from birdpictures.org