Critters

We managed to keep most of the cottontail bunnies out of the garden with the fencing and additional chickenwire on the bottom.  However, there was one tiny bunny which found spots where it could squeeze under the fence and the normal sized rabbits couldn’t. It was cute and so small — even when it stretched up it barely was tall as the raised beds.

Over the course of a couple weeks the tiny bunny was a routine visitor. There were plenty  of grassy weeds for this little critter to eat as the broken wrist had the garden chores way behind. I don’t know if it was just a baby or if it was a runt.

California quail are pretty and very dumb local birds.  At certain times of the year flocks assemble at the base of the hill on which we live.  And too often then they have the misfortune of trying to stay with the flock crossing the road while a car is going along the road.  Then at other times, they appear to separate into pairs and spread uphill.  And that is when they show up in our garden like this one.

Every so often in mid-summer we see a road runner wandering through the neighborhood. This one decided to enter the garden and hung around while I went back into the house for the camera. It spent quite a few minutes exploring — apparently it was hunting lunch and one unlucky lizard turned out to be on the menu.

This critter was hanging out in a gopher hole and was not happy to have the human filling in his hideaway.

No clue what happened to the melon initally. Perhaps the ground squirrel chewed on it. But once it was open, the yellow jackets came to feast.

Later that day all that was left of the melon was the shell. The yellow jackets cleaned it completely.  Just a shell and seeds left.