Urban Wildlife

It's easy to go looking for wildlife in wild areas, harder to open your eyes and your mind to the wild creatures that have found ways to exist in the eddies and cracks of the manufactured world humans call civilization. Yet these sturdy prevailing creatures and plants are here forcing a foothold in unwelcoming environs. Last night as we were dropped off at the curb after an evening out, we were pleasantly surprised to see an eight inch female alligator lizard on our steps. She was using the lure of our walkway lights to catch her fill of insects. Five feet away was one of her latest offspring. Only two and a half inches long, this miniature of its mother moved with her same serpentine wiggle.

This morning a swarm of tiny (1 mm) insects are creating a moving matrix on the dry ground beneath the Grevillia robusta in the backyard. They aren't on the moist ground where the sprinklers sprayed last night and they aren't 10 feet away on the hillside. I don't know what they are, but after three days of over 103 F degrees weather, the ground is alive with them. I'm hoping they are lizard food.

I spotted an uncommon Lorquin's admiral butterfly winging its way through the parking lot over the stripmall. A pale orb spider has a wonderful web next to the mail box. The jungle is all around us, waiting to reclaim the Earth.