Well, December 21st came and went. The Mayan calendar ended, the planets aligned, 2012 is coming to a close and life is going on without any major events…Except some nice stormy and wintery weather for the Holidays! For the most part, its been a good year. Todd’s projects have yielded a lot more landscaping, a beautiful revamped pond complete with fish, an outdoor potting/work bench, a chicken coop with chicken and a large garden plot ready for planting this spring! Our little desert acre is a mental sanctuary that keeps us from dwelling on the pressure and stress of ‘real life’! We have been so blessed!
Of course, one of the things we most enjoy about living here is having all of the wildlife that we can watch from our living room or the porch! This time of year, all of the reptiles, squirrels and dirt monkeys are safely tucked away in their underground homes, sleeping the winter away. We lose some of the variety of birds, as most go south, but we still have the quail, sparrows, mourning doves, and the cardinals…
The cardinals dot the winter landscape with their brilliant color! (I just missed getting the 3rd bird in this shot!)
The javelina are thick and having lots of babies!
But, the baby javelina are good eatin’ for some during the winter…
Bob has been hanging out a lot!
Although, we have not seen the bobcat get a baby javelina, we have seen him get rabbits! Quite gruesome! I think the coyotes are more interested in the baby javies than the bobcats! (This next year I hope to get a photo of a coyote..the only pic that I don’t have!) We rarely see coyotes during the day, but almost always hear them at night, yipping and yelping! The other night Todd ran outside because we thought they might be trying to get into the chicken coop! Since then, Todd has put lots of reinforcements on the coop to prevent that from ever happening! I think the coyotes and bobcats have been a major contributor to the dwindling rabbit population! Now, we are lucky to see just one or two bunnies at a time!
Awww…One bun’s just no fun!
So we decided to get a couple of our own!
Meet C-Lo (Carrot LOver) and Odie
They are living happily inside, and hopefully, we might train them to be good house rabbits (i.e. to use a litter box). We got a big portable pen to put on the porch so they can go out and run around a bit. It’s a riot watching them running and hopping around! They are little hip hoppers! We can’t leave them unsupervised for a moment though.
Fresh buns would be delightful delicacy for this guy…
More than once, Mr. Hawkins has flown under the porch to check out our other possible menu items…
Like Feline ala Furreir
Or perhaps just a plain hot dog!
The only other possible pickings we had to offer was Petite Puggle…but I believe that she is no longer on Mr. Hawkin’s menu…
But Daisy had better watch out! Plump puggle would be a lovely dinner for Coyotes!
