Author: boolie

The Little Antelope

A side view of a Harris's antelope squirrel standing on a granite boulder with its tail curved along its back

Most of the time I see Harris’s antelope squirrels at a distance as they scurry about their desert home. Sometimes I get lucky and get to watch one up close for a while, it’s always a treat to earn their trust. This little fellow had just finished eating a cactus fruit, you can see some of the green rind he discarded at his feet. The antelopes are smaller than the other ground squirrels in our neck of the desert, the rock squirrel, and different in appearance as well.

I didn’t do any hiking on any of my three days off this weekend as my chronic bowel issues have been bothering me a bit of late and its too risky to take to the trails since I don’t have much warning when trouble is brewing. And while we don’t have any ground squirrels in our neighborhood I nevertheless did see an antelope yesterday as my wife and I attended a few open houses. One house literally had my favorite part of my favorite park behind its backyard and as we pulled up an antelope squirrel (not this one, but he was at the same preserve) ran out of the rocks of the house across the street.

We’re not ready to buy yet, just trying to get a feel for the neighborhoods, and I’m not sure I’d want that long of a commute to work even if it meant I could literally walk out the door to a nearby trail, or a trivial drive to the trailhead I visit most often. But it has me thinking.

I Can See Into Your Soul, Hu-man

Our cat Boo staring at me as he rests in the cat bed in my office

When he was younger, sometimes you’d look up and see Boo staring straight into your soul. From the get-go he has been part mystic and part goofball, effortlessly transitioning between the two. The staring stopped as he grew older but the rest holds true even today. This is from 2013, a few months after we adopted him.

Calling Out

A rock squirrel calls out atop a large granite boulder near Granite Mountain in McDowell Sonoran Preserve

A rock squirrel calls out atop a large granite boulder near Granite Mountain. It had a piece of saguaro fruit but instead of eating it was sending out the alarm for much of the time I watched it during a food and water break. At first I thought it was complaining about me to the other nearby squirrels, even though I was far down the hill, but it kept looking in other directions and went quiet for a while before starting up again. It has lots of enemies in the desert, most of whom would not have been visible from my vantage point, but I haven’t spent much time with these squirrels yet to get a feel if it was sending out an alarm or claiming this spot as its own.

After Dark All Cats Become Leopards

Our cat Boo sleeps slumped over the cat bed next to a clock that says 'After Dark All Cats Become Leopards'

We discovered early on that Boo had no bones, this was a common sleeping pose a couple of months after we adopted him in 2013. The clock with the translation of a proverb attributed to the Zuni I bought at an art fair in Salem years ago. Though it no longer works I keep it out as I bought it for the art not the clock.