Hot times in the old town, as the fella says. Yesterday’s high of 100° set a record for June 7. Normal is 89°.
But what’s normal these days?
The mule deer are slow-walking their rounds from rose bush to birdbath, lingering at feeders provided by some well-intentioned animal lovers up the road a ways. Wandering from this handout to that, the deer startle motorists in blind corners and make high-speed descents on the old two-wheeler a little more thrilling.
Seven of them were working our cul-de-sac last night, no doubt with designs on the neighbors’ new peach tree, which is enclosed in the sort of stout wire cage that should be restricting the movements of Alex Jones and Rudy the Mook, preferably in some public place so passersby can poke them with sharp sticks. Jones and the Mook, not the peach tree or deer.
Over at Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne has his own musings on heat and wildlife as he settles in for another sweaty shift dishing up his Joshua Tree jive.
The days are long and hot and hazy. Another summer to endure. … It just eats at your nerves, this kind of weather, and what’s worse is you know that the hot weather is another month or two away. What’s bearable when you’re alone under a cottonwood in the breeze is absolute torment when you’re trying to get yourself from point A to point B and see ugliness all around. Dead eyes behind the cracked windshields of erratically piloted vehicles; the never-ending trash piles; empty strip malls of crumbling stucco and blank plastic signs. Long stretches of highway with nothing but human-built desolation. The ragweed’s coming up too. Best to stay on the property in the company of the creatures who survive this aesthetic apocalypse.
Layne provides a bit of heat relief for his neighbors. Young rock squirrels have taken to hanging around the water bowl he leaves out for the birds, one of them trying and failing to surf the ice cubes he includes from time to time. A cottontail dozes on the doormat. The bobcat, coyotes, and mountain lions he leaves to fend for themselves.
He has mule deer, too, hugging whatever shade they can find, under a willow or juniper. Doesn’t mention any peach trees or rose bushes.
Should we be feeding and watering these critters? Well … what we call “our” property was theirs first, after all. Is it unreasonable to ask that we contribute a little something to the common good?
This seems to be Layne’s thinking. And ours, too. We maintain two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders, and don’t holler copper on the deer ambling through the yard. Noblesse oblige? Share and share alike? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? Here’s the Desert Oracle again:
Now these rock squirrels are desert squirrels, squirrels of the Southwest. They don’t even need water, beyond what they get from the various seeds, grasses, fruits and bugs that they eat. But these young squirrels, they are fools for cold water. They just hang around that bowl for half the day. And now I cannot replace that bowl with a proper birdbath even if I wanted to, because what will the squirrels and the bunnies do?
Mad Blog Media 
We have three feeders and three birdbaths. We gave up on the hummingbird feeders because the ants would commit mass suicide in them before the hummers could get to them. I guess one can put flypaper on the stands, but that too produces carnage.
Another day in the 90’s up here. Starting to think too much of that Rod Serling episode about the planet being tweaked out of orbit, “The Midnight Sun”. I watched that as a kid and it was a little jarring.
“The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed. Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer-watchers in the Twilight Zone.”
The folks we buy our birdseed from showed us how to make an ant moat using a wine cork, two small screw-in hooks, and the top couple inches of a plastic water bottle. Works pretty well. I think Rod Serling would approve.
Meanwhile, 94° here at 4 p.m. We got out for a ride a little late, met a couple chatty folk halfway through, and stayed out a bit longer than we had planned. I required some ice water, a sammich and a brief nap after.
Do you worry about those birdbaths turning into skeeter farms? Damn, but the little bloodsuckers have been active down here the past couple of years.
I worry about the skeeters, but it’s that or the birds. I’ll have to ask you about that ant moat. I have to put the cat food in an ant moat for the same reasons.
Besides the usual critters, the baby quail are around right now. I have two large pot saucers, one in our yard and one in the neighbor’s across the street, that I keep full of fresh water. One is under a large rose bush, and the other is under a crepe myrtle. Shady places to drink while safe from the hawks.
Aw, man, we love us some baby quail. If we’d gotten out at a decent hour this morning I expect we might have seen some. Heard a few, but no actual sightings.
Yesterday I saw two adult quail and two bunnies, but that was another late start.
We’ve snagged a puppy each of the last two starts to the school year, and with each one, the trip to the backyard to do their business required a two-legged critter to accompany them, along with some yelping, arm waving, and general shenanigans to scare off any owl-folks who might want an 10 pound snack. But as the pups got bigger, the helicopter parenting slip slides away, and lately it has been, open the back door, and get out of their way.
But the other day, I was taking them for their rounds at a whisker past 4:59 am. We went out the front, through the garage, and the second the door raised up past their eyeballs, but still around knee height to Pops, they went ape shit, barking up a storm at something in the street. Pappy had to wait until the door was fully raised — because at my age, I’m not squatting or bending over until I’ve been awake for two hours and the coffee has taken the place of the synovial fluid that I should but don’t have in my joints — and it was only then that I realized my two twenty-pound puppers were trying to scare off a juvenile coyote, casually walking down the boulevard.
So now we’re back to sending the cavalry out to snoop and poop and sneak and peek whenever the dogs go out.
Gotta keep your eyes peeled when the coyotes are on the job. We see fewer of them around here lately; they used to hold a nightly concert in the foothills and were a common sight on the Linear Trail between Comanche and Candelaria.
I wonder whether something bigger — a mountain lion, maybe — might have caused them to relocate north to Sandia Heights. Lots more small game up there, along with bigger lots, fewer walls, and less traffic.
No heat wave up here, at least not yet. Global warming will change that in time. But what we lack in the way of ungodly temperatures we clearly make up with the overabundance of cicadas we’re dealing with. One can’t walk 10 feet out the door without being pelted numerous times by the flying (trying to fly) critters. The noise of billions or trillions of them is deafening. They’ll be “gone soon.” But that’s also how we thought COVID-19 would go. Most of us would rather trade for the high temps.
As bird baths go, if one has one or many, they all should be hosed out thoroughly and refilled daily, as to not become large petri dish science experiments.
Cicadas. Yowsah. We have a few species here, but we’re not dealing with the madness you folks are enduring.
The bane of my existence at present is the cricket. When one sneaks into the house, the chirping … well, with adobe walls, brick pavers, and very little carpeting, let’s just say their voices carry. Oy, do they carry.
Good point about the birdbaths. We’re backed up against an arroyo that’s part of a large network of drains that stair-step down from the foothills to the Rio, and when it rains — which lately it doesn’t — it can retain little puddles here and there that in short order become mosquito maquiladoras. Them sumbitches can spoil an evening on the patio right quick.
Oh for the love of pie…..I thought the lack of mosquitoes was why people moved to the southwest. Now you inform me otherwise. I know invasive species (we Midwesterners primarily) moved your way over the years and brought many a non-native plant to help fire up allergies and bogart water. Oh how we love mowing grass…
Pie? Did someone mention pie? (slurp)