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As found peeking up through some backyard blades of grass near the hammock stand (click for the bigger picture):

Lacking content for an actual post, I’ll occasionally dive into the photo libraries and dredge up an image from the past, such as this captivating if otherwise unknown species of flying — presumably sting-capable — insect who was pretty protective of its sandy spot midway up Eureka Dunes in Death Valley, during the first time Susan and I visited there in November of 2005.

We’ll be in Death Valley next month, and while Eureka Dunes isn’t on the itinerary this time around, we’re looking forward to a demonstration of the park’s wildflower prowess, thanks to some above-average rainfall this winter.

I practically skidded to a stop when I heard them last night, because I’m the type of guy who while biking home in the darkness of Ballona Creek will do that kind of thing in order to listen to and appreciate the music of  the night as sung by some unseen frogs somewhere nearby.

They’re very early this year. Normally they don’t sound off until deep into spring. Perhaps they were drawn out so soon by the unseasonably rich weather of the last three days? Whatever the reason it was my treat to hear them and now yours, too.

I was much more uplifted by the first clip, featuring what I expect is a protective mama Cooper’s Hawk chasing off a nest-encroaching and substantially larger red-tailed hawk that I chanced upon this morning when on 4th Street and Rimpau I heard the telltale Cooper’s laughing call and was able to bring my digicam to bear just as the red-tail decided it was time to go and the Cooper’s hawk gave pursuit:

The second clip  from the lower resolution/quality of my sunglasses cam is a head-shaking compilation of today’s cyclist assbag: a redrunner executing back-to-back light jumps first on Venice Boulevard at Robertson and next at Bagley. Take note of all the extra work he had to do to get across Robertson — arriving on the other side just as the light turns green — an excellent* savings of several precious seconds. I’m a firm believer in not running reds, but if you’re gonna break the law then nut-up and own it. Don’t do all that silly fading in and out between bunny hops and dabs. You just look like lame.

Moving on. Having eliminated said lamer’s overly wrought and hard-fought headstart at Bagley I was then able to immortalize another example of his excellent* Right-U-Right (RUR) technique, wherein to clear the red on Venice he fades onto Bagley, executes what I suppose could qualify as the straightest u-turn ever, then goes right back onto Venice. This is why I hate cyclists:

* And by “excellent” I mean “What the fuck’s your hurry, jerk?”

A front-page story in today’s LA Times details the mysterious struggles brown pelicans up and down the coast are having to survive.

Yesterday, biking to work in the morning along Ballona Creek between Overland and Sepulveda I found heartbreaking proof of that:

I stood where I was looking for movement, but there was none. Had there been even the slightest sign it was still alive you know damn well I would’ve stopped the world and been over the fence and down that bank like a shot to do I don’t even know what to try and help the poor thing. Because that’s how I roll.

But there was nothing I could do for a creature so magnificent to watch course through the air and so sad to see it downed there.

Haiti’s got me dwelling and waking up. The quake, it’s terrifying devastation and its chaotic aftermath have all served  to show me how ill-equipped our household is and will be when an epic disaster strikes Los Angeles.

When. Not if.

Sure, we’ve got emergency food/supply backpacks in each of our cars. Plus there’s an emergency container in the backyard. We’ve got sturdy shoes and flashlights and a transistor radio and spare batteries and about five gallons of drinking water. But we are so seriously lacking in other essential aspects and a comprehensive emergency plan that for the first time in my life as an L.A. native who’s been through every temblor since the 1971 Sylmar quake, I am just now finally recognizing how such an abject lack of planning and preparation can make a bad situation worse and a catastrophic situation potentially devastating.

So now it’s time to go full-stop and reverse that trend. It’s time to quit allowing all that negative potential the opportunity to be realized, and instead go about covering all the bases as best I can. Not so much for any peace of mind beforehand, but for the chance at a better ability to cope and survive in the inevitable nightmarish aftermath.

UPDATED (01.17): On this the 16th anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake, I secured our first bookcase — the one that stands inside the front entrance. My original intent was simply to dust it and its contents for the first time in waaaaay too long, but in the course of doing that I realized attaching it to the wall to be a simple matter of driving three long screws through a crosspiece supporting one of its shelves into the plaster behind it. Voila! One down, maaaaany more to go.

So here’s how things went down. After breakfast Christmas Eve morning in the amazing Awahnee dining room followed by a visit to the Yosemite Village store to pick up some hairspray for mom (which she’d forgot to pack), it was decided she would hang out at the hotel while Susan and I did some sightseeing.

So off we went and checked out Yosemite Falls, returning from which we found mom in the lobby of the Awahnee, whereupon she regaled us with her close encounter with the predatory king of the area’s food chain.

After getting back to her room with the hairspray she also discovered that she had somehow managed to forget all her makeup, and so donning her mink coat and foregoing the shuttle service, she set out from the hotel for the approximate 10 minute walk to the store.

But instead of striding along the paved pedestrian path on the hotel-side of the road, she opted for the more natural route that wound through the trees and big boulders between the north side of the road and the granite walls of the canyon.

There she is strolling serenely along still within the boundaries of the hotel’s grounds trying to figure out how she could have been such a doof and left her makeup at home, when she heard a voice from across the road, calling urgently and firmly to her: “Ma’am!”

My mom turned and found a uniformed person leading a small group of people on some sort of tour (probably of the hotel).

“Yes?” she answered.

“I need you to listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say.”

“Okay…”

” I want you to walk directly to me. Do it slowly. Now. Don’t turn around. Don’t run. Just walk. To me.”

Despite my mother’s tendency neither to listen very carefully nor to do exactly as she’s told. She followed orders and in a few moments she was across the road and standing before the uniformed person who asked her if she’d like to see why he asked her to do what she did.

“Of course,” she said.

Grabbing her by her fur-clad shoulders he rotated her around until she was looking back where she had been. Perched on the tall boulder she had been passing on her left was a mountain lion.

“Not a very big one,” she told us.

But big enough for her jaw to drop open as she watched it looking from her where she was standing to down directly below it where she had stopped, the lion’s long tail whipping back and forth a few times before it leapt behind the rock and out of sight.

“It was stalking you,” the man told her. “Best to stay on this side of the road.”

Again, she did as she was told. And it wasn’t until later that she realized the impact of the encounter and what might have happened had that tour guide not been there to get her safely away from it. It haunted the rest of her stay.

Postscript: The closest we came to a mountain lion were these tracks we found while tromping off-trail on Christmas Day near the base of El Capitan:

Here’s something you don’t see everyday in Big City LA: a peregrine falcon perched and feasting from its kill on the ledge of the office building across from mine in Westchester’s Howard Hughes Center,

To get this artificially zoomed footage I put my cam’s lens up against an eyepiece of an 12×25 set of binoculars and balanced the whole thing on my knee while sitting at my desk.

Don’t mourn the pigeon too much. A falcon’s gotta eat!

(click image for the bigger picture)

A couple days of rains last week followed by some dewy mornings giving way to warm afternoons have startled the grasses from their seasonal subsoil slumber and sent them shooting up at the skies and sun so that they now blanket sections of the previously barren backyard a brilliant emerald green.

As the rest look on, some blades have hefted the feather’s weight of fallen leaves, raising them off the ground like pallbearers in a solemn and stalled procession through the crowd.

(all images can be clicked for the bigger picture)

A couple weeks ago Susan came home to find a tell-tale lizard tail on the kitchen floor, but unlike the last time when Jiggy brought a tail and its lizard inside, the rest of the reptile was nowhere in sight so we figured (hoped) that Jiggy had just brought the tail indoors and the rest of the reptile escaped.

Until this morning when I found Jiggy sitting atop the picnic basket on the floor of the nook in the dining room, very keen on whatever might be underneath.

Sure enough there was the alligator lizard, who’d been there long enough to fully molt — and to grow a replacement tail!

I was happy to find it in such decent health and after I shooed Jiggy away was able to catch it up in a Mason jar and release it outside.