Some Of The Locals, Red In Tooth And Claw

This girl stops by on the way to the neighbor's bird feeder, where she picks off a Mourning Dove for her daily dinner. The neighbor keeps putting out seeds, the Mourning Doves keep flying in, and the Cooper's Hawk keeps dining. I love her polka-dotted pants.


This girl sticks strictly to dog biscuits. Her bunny-chasing days are behind her. No, she's not blue about her bunny-chasing memories. She just doesn't want a bath.


She's an earwig-eating machine. Go to it, honey!


Beautiful, eats mosquitos, and the color of a desert sunrise. What's not to love?



If you are a koi keeper, Feathered Evil. Flying Death. What you have nightmares about. If the koi is too big to swallow, they stab them to death anyway, just for practice. Get thee behind me, Satan!


She eats her boyfriends. And anything else she can get. But not koi.

Sorry about the photo quality, but this girl is quite shy. Her favorite food is house cat, and she's probably responsible for eating the neighbor's Siamese, the other neighbor's Burmese, another neighbor's Tabby, another neighbor's miniature Dachshund, and not enough rabbits. We wish every local rabbit upon her, but the cats are apparently far easier to catch.




Of course there is no pure angel or pure evil (except the Heron) in our little natural world. The koi will eat dragonflies if they can snatch them, the Coyotes are the victims (mostly) of humankind, house cats will kill as many song birds as the hawks; the hawks will grab lizards if they can. So it's not a matter of good or evil (except the Heron). Everyone is just trying to make a living how ever they can. It's humankind who assigns "good" and "evil".

But it is humankind who gardens. We should take full credit for that.