Sorry for the second punny title in a row. Today was extremely hot. It was also 4/20. When I got up in the morning I heard a strange clicking in the tops of the redwoods around campus. One glance at Natural History later, I had discovered the sound is coming from woodland cicadas, who come up from underground every spring, breed, and then die around June. Tomorrow I'll go searching the bases of redwoods for the cicadas' discarded skins, which Natural History says won't be too hard to find.
I saw some sky lupine (lupinis nanus) today. I got to hold an alligator lizard, which my friend Sierra identified and I later looked up in Natural History. It was a long, strong, pretty lizard which was hard to catch. It was hiding in the tall grass, but once we got it it seemed to calm down (or go into shock). Oh my, I just read in Natural History that these lizards have a powerful, flesh-tearing bite. Ours was unlucky enough to have ticks in its ear.
The book also informs me that alligator lizards have prehensile tales which they sometimes bite the ends of in order to form a loop too big for a predator to swallow, much like the Ouroborus of legend which represented cycles in time--a snake continually devouring itself. Speaking of which, alligator lizards often tuck in their legs and slither along the ground like snakes, which I saw this one doing when I was trying to catch it. According to the book, both northern and southern alligator lizards are found on campus, and I think this one was a southern because of the grassland habitat we found it in. Another cook factoid from the book: southern alligator lizards are immune to black widow venom.
No other cool wildlife encounters today, unless you count deer. Or raccoons, which come up and scratch the window of my lounge every night.
Goodnight, happy 4/21, and may the odds be ever in your favor during the housing games.
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