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What Do You Mean This Is the Dog’s Bed?
Boo in 2013 about a month after we adopted him. Shy as he was, he was never afraid of Ellie and enjoyed sleeping in her beds right from the start, especially if she warmed them up for him. He’d slink in underneath her as she got up which almost got him sat on once when she was just shifting her position.
Black Tips
A black-tailed jackrabbit is mostly obscured in the desert scrub but the black tips that dance at the top of its ears caught my eye.
I Can See Into Your Soul, Hu-man
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.
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A saguaro at first light on the Chuckwagon Trail. The old ones don’t have so many spines left at their base.
Calling Out
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
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.
In the Wash
Most of the desert washes I cross when I hike are fairly small but not so Apache Wash, there are signs as you approach warning you not to enter when flooded and the large debris scattered around tells you why. It was damp on the morning I crossed on my first visit to Phoenix Sonoran Preserve but the rains and thus the danger had long since passed the day before, so I and a pair of desert cottontails enjoyed the quiet before the sun came up.
A Sense of Smell
Ellie in 2013 on high alert after my wife opened the refrigerator door. She’d wait and see what you took out of the fridge before deciding if she should get up, she’d come running if you pulled out the cheese and meat drawer but stay where she was for vegetables.
Squeeze Play
Boolie 