So pretty, I almost want to let it in my teleportation pod.
Help Me!
Colocasia elephant ears produce a new leaf roughly once per week per growth point. The new leaves emerge from the back of the petiole of the previous leaf, and the growth point keeps only three or four leaves at a time, with the oldest and outermost leaf dying after a month or so. The plant reabsorbs nutrients from the old leaf, which changes colors and shrivels away.
Today on the Los Gatos Creek trail I saw a skunk, the first one I’ve ever seen in over 10 years of riding the trail. Pretty unusual for it to be out in the middle of the day, but there (s)he was, a couple of feet off the trail. It seemed intent on munching something on the ground, didn’t even look up when I rode by.
Hm, they’re fairly common around here. A couple of years ago, I saw four skunks in a two-week period. Well, it might have been three: Two of the locations were pretty close together.
One of them got as far as raising his tail before I noticed him, but still facing directly towards me, not looking over his shoulder. I backed off and waited until he was well and truly clear of my path.
Droplets caught in a spider’s web:
Yesterday, during the employee fall retreat, I went into the woods on campus for our quiet reflection time, and came across a herd of deer. That’s not too unusual, except that two of them were bucks. One had an absolutely magnificent rack that looked like it was 12 points (though I know that without a good count, numbers like that tend to inflate in the mind of the viewer), while the other had a modest four points or so. I’m guessing that the guy with the small rack was the son of big-rack, and was just an early bloomer (I also just today saw a fawn still in spots).
This morning at Island Park in Bighorn National Forest I saw a female moose 
It was one of my goals for this trip (another was to spend time / the night at a fire lookout which is where I am posting from)
Brian
Møøse are one of the few North American wildlife that I haven’t seen (I think pretty much just them and grey wolves). Well, I think. There was one camping trip where some of my friends said they saw a møøse go into the water, but by the time I saw it, all I could see was its nose as it swam. There was definitely some critter there, and it might have been a møøse (we were in the right terrain), but I couldn’t be at all confident as to its species.
Aww, he’s a big cuddly thing!
Yeah. If he was teal, he would look like Sulley:
You just don’t want to risk angry Sulley!
Saw some ospreys this morning at the newly-opened Don Horsley County Park (aka Tunitas Creek Beach south of Half Moon Bay)
The blurring almost makes it look like a bear-shaped indentation in the ground.
Now that’s an interesting fence lizard shot 
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I’ve taken approximately umpty-million pictures of them because they’re there and I can’t not. But I’ve never been particularly pleased with any of them. Perhaps just needed the right background.
I thought of your avatar when I saw it.
We’re in Santa Fe, staying at an Air BNB. Nice place, in the foothills near the Opera. I went to walk the dog, and saw the lizard trying to hide behind the statue, so I coaxed him up to the head, until he peaked out enough to get a photo.
The youngish Joro living in my youngish elephant ears.
