Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Animal Stories #41

Down the road is the Big Chino Wash. There are a few trees in the wash on one side of the road that offer rare shade for the baby antelope. Every time we cross over the bridge on the way to Chino Valley, I look for the babies. Antelope are such delicate creatures. The babies are really slight little creatures.

Big Chino Wash. Seems like an understatement. It's so wide and flat that some farmer has crops growing in part of it. On average, he must get wiped out every seven years. With all the rain we had in the last couple of weeks, some here on Tortuga Flats, but always in the mountains around us, I thought we might see it run. Only the lowest ribbon of a strip had any water.

We have hummingbirds. I thought they were skittish, sweet birds until we hung three feeders. They are not social creatures and fight amongst themselves all the time. We have one bully who tries to run off the others even when not feeding. They are fearless of us. In fact, one dive bombed Frank. But we do get entertainment watching them.

One more animal story - Xena (our toad licking female) likes strawberries. I planted two plants in the area out front of the house just because the plants are cheap and attractive. One plant puts out one berry at a time and Xena always beats me to picking it when it ripens. I wouldn't know this except we caught her the first time. Now I watch and try to get it just as it ripens but that naughty girl beats me every time.

One writing note: If you like ebooks, western stories, romance and entertainment, my latest is part of a series from The Wild Rose Press that is getting lots of good reviews.

2 comments:

  1. Been off-line doing edits. Catching up now. How lucky you are to have humming birds! I've never seen one in real life. But we have the humming bird moth which is about the same size and shape. Good job Xena doesn't live here. We have a species of toad with poisonous skin. I live in terror that one of my animals will lick one!

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    1. Doing edits is a good thing to be doing! Scary. Take care of those animals!

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