(This is the sixth installment of a series.  Read the others chronologically by clicking these links: first, second, third, fourth, fifth)

Within a month, a letter from Professor Harrower had arrived requiring me to return to the Ganskopf Institute to draw another selection of mysterious “Owl Fetishes” from the Institute’s diverse collection. The project was still making little sense to me, because of its sporadic and leisurely timing, the odd, anachronistic communication style of my employer, and the curious nature of the pieces themselves. But the money was welcome – a freelance technical artist’s pay can be unreliable at times – so of course, when summoned, I went.

And at last, after prehistoric pebbles, pine-bark souvenirs, Attic coins, and other miscellany, the Special Collections librarian Miss Laguna had brought out something really odd – two items that conformed a little more closely to my expectations of what “mystery relics” ought to be. It was a pair of strange straw owl “dolls” – really just owl-like shapes about 8 and 10 inches tall – bound with colored twine and smelling a bit mildewy, like an old barn. One was an extremely rudimentary representation, faceless, and owlish only because of its proportions and an aura of eyeless alertness.  This was due to the presence, perhaps deliberate, of “ears” at the folded axis of the straw representing its head. The other, held together with a faded purple cord and made with a greener straw, was owly and anthropomorphic, with stunted wing-like “arms” jutting out to the side, and thick-thighed legs. It had more of a face, with eyes and beak stitched on in the purple cord, and straw blossoms jutting up in a V to indicate “horns”. The stitched eyes looked blank, and its slightly torqued posture gave it the impression of motion, but also made it look impaired somehow, damaged: the effect was unsettling. Equally disturbing was the fact that both owls appeared blind – not the standard presentation of open-eyed owliness, especially common in folk-art.  Neither figure stood upright, but appeared to be meant to either hang, or simply lie flat.

Their straw was spotted and stained, and the pieces looked fragile; in fact, each had shed a few crumbs and fragments of dry fiber onto the black velvet pillow. Miss Laguna allowed the crumbs to lie there, and gently passing a non-latex purple-gloved hand above them, explained that all the bits and pieces would have to go back in the drawer with the objects after I was through. She set them down a little farther from me than usual, then looked at me and said seriously, “Please, I must ask you to not breathe on them. They suffer in the presence of moisture.” This earnest instruction, together with the moldy smell of old straw, had the instant effect of making me need to sneeze, which I tried to suppress as I nodded my head and began to set up my gear with watering eyes.

It was going to take a long time: my sketches needed to accurately reflect the number and placement of each fiber of straw, and also I wanted to be especially sure to capture the creepiness of the purple-twined figure’s posture. I’d forgotten my watch, so I glanced up through the Special Collection’s front glass to check the wall-clock in the main reading room. As I did, I noticed another patron: once again, it was the sleek Dr. Danneru. He was talking on a cell phone, nonchalantly stationed right under a sign plainly forbidding cell phone use. When he saw me looking, he turned away as if for privacy, although I couldn’t hear him through the glass.  The rules just don’t apply to some people, I thought, and turned back to my work.

The sketches did take a long time. Miss Laguna, despite her concern over the decomposing straw pieces I was drawing, left me largely on my own. This was in order to see attentively to the needs of her other patron, who had finished his phone call, passed through the metal detector and past the security guard into Special Collections, and was currently viewing a Ganskopf item at the table behind me. I was not surprised to see a steaming mug held in one of his hands as if it were too hot to drink, but too coveted to put down. The grassy – and pricey – aroma of green Rooibos tea reached me where I sat, mildly irked by the scholar’s flagrantly bootlegged luxury beverage, when I had been instructed to not even breathe.

A couple of hours passed in the near silence of the Special Collections room. By then my back had stiffened up from leaning across the table to get closer to the straw figures, and it was getting dark outside.  I found it necessary to stand up to straighten out: I extended my arms over head, cracked my neck, and twisted my torso right, then left. Then right again, quickly checking behind me: Dr. Danneru had disappeared – perhaps to fetch fresh tea – leaving his notes on the table, along with the black cushion and his study object. He must have left quietly, because I’d never noticed. Miss Laguna was nowhere in sight, either. As if merely stretching my legs, I casually sauntered over to the other table, curious to see if the scholar was studying an owl I’d already drawn. He wasn’t. I stared.

Now, there was a “mystery relic”…

To be continued…

Here are the Famous Fish Rocks, kept fresh with white paint by unknown artists in Trona, California.  I admit to disappointment when I found out they were not meant to represent T-rexes rising out of the earth to once again dominate the landscape, but, even if they’re just fish… really big fish… they’re excellent.  Each one is the size of a van. I will think of them as Dunkleosteus. The Famous Fish are easy to spot just north of CA State Hwy 178 en route to the Trona Pinnacles.

<< Fish Rocks (A.Shock)

The Trona Pinnacles were our destination: ancient underwater spring deposits now high and dry in the Mojave Desert.  They’re very large-scale versions of the tufa towers on the south shore of Mono Lake, further north, only there’s no water in sight. Predictably, the only creatures there other than ourselves were a traveller in a brightly painted hippy bus, a Rock wren, and a Raven.

The towers are up to 40 feet tall. >>

Perhaps you recognize the setting from Planet of the Apes, or Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?

Surely Shiva abides here.

And also here, at the Trona Community Methodist Church, which has seen fit to adorn its front entrance with smaller yet equally vigorous tufa deposits.  (Click to enlarge.)

Speaking of reverence gone awry, below is a bonus pop religious image of Shiva.  I find this version delightfully goofy: ascetic hermit my butt, there’s Tres Flores in those dreads — this is Shiva El Guapo.  It seems to be a portrait of the artist’s well-fed brother in law who wants to be an actor, rather than the standard idealized image of blue-male deity with the dreamy, stoned I mean introspective expression of the Lord of Eternity. His familiar smile and direct gaze are right out of an AFTRA/SAG headshot — instead of the blessing of Om and the Shiva-linga in his palm, this chap should be flashing us a confident thumbs-up, or making that “call me” gesture next to his Nagraj’s ear.

A few days ago, we drove far out into sage-covered lava rocks to check out some hot springs on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.  After walking to the top of the hill, walking around the next hill and between two other hills, seeing what birds were around and about, and while E was nearby doing Science in Hot Water, I felt I’d had enough wind — since we were above 7000′ feet, it was a cold wind — so I sheltered in the cab of the truck.

The rock I watched >>

If this seems like a nature-phobic sort of thing to do, let me recommend it: a vehicle makes a wonderful blind, great for observing otherwise human-wary wildlife.  I watched a Wilson’s warbler, a sweet scrap of yellow with a smart black cap, struggle in the gusts from one juniper tree to another right in front of the hood; an Audubon’s warbler, too, was getting buffeted about in the same nearby trees. And, next to the truck was this large Rock (top photo).  I studied it, thinking about making a sketch.

<< Ground squirrel and spiny lizard (far right edge of rock)

It was clear that this rock had been heavily used — most obviously by people, who’d built fires under it, but also by plants who’d sprouted in its cracks, lichens crusting its surfaces, and by animals, who were sunning themselves on it. Although I never made a sketch, I was able to watch and photo a series of species — seven in all, ultimately, although I only could photo five — as they used this rock as viewpoint, shelter, sunning place, food storage or source. (All photos A.Shock; be sure to click on each image to enlarge for better viewing.)

Birds landed on it briefly, including the Wilson’s warbler, and a vivid Western tanager male.

<< male Western tanager on the Rock

Being hydrothermally altered (so I’m assured by E), it was porous and full of useful cracks and refuges.  A small movement caught my eye, and in the darkest crack in the darkest center of the sooty overhang, a Piñon deermouse had packed the crevice with soft needles and moss, and was turning this way and that in its snug, sheltered nest, running tiny paws over its big ears.

<< Piñon deermouse in crevice nest in the Rock

Best yet, I happened to look over at the upper dark hole in the rock just in time to see this little face peering out, checking on how things were in the middle of the day.  It’s a Long-tailed weasel, a native here (unlike in New Zealand), but still an active and industrious predator.  I was alarmed when the ground squirrel above made a short trip into the very hole the weasel had just gone back inside.  But there was no disaster, and the squirrel came right back out again, presumably with all its parts, and with no dramatic nature-show confrontation music to mark the event.

Long-tailed weasel outside its hole in the Rock >>

The seventh species I observed on the Rock was Homo sapiens.  It was one of the two dudes that came by in a battered Isuzu Trooper (like the one I drove for years).  Although I didn’t get a picture of him up on the top of the Rock, we were particularly glad to see this human being: something you won’t often hear me say.  The reason he was a fine sight on this backcountry, rocky road?  That’s another story.  I won’t tell it here, except to say that it involved jumper cables…

…was a “life snake” for us, meaning we’d never seen one before we stopped to photo this graceful specimen crossing the road on the way to Titus Canyon on the east side of Death Valley.

The Mohave patch-nosed snake (Salvadora hexalepis mojavensis) is a diurnal generalist, with good eyesight and quick reflexes; this one was sunning itself on the rocky dirt road on a east-facing hill.  We kept our distance, but moved closer after we’d photo’d it, so it moved off the road to safety.  (Photos A.Shock)

Be sure to click on the close-up to enlarge it, so you can see the big rostral scale on the nose-tip of this burrowing, non-venomous snake.  There’s even a little bit of grit still sprinkling its broad head-plates.

Recent posts have been about lady bugs, and prickly pears.  Here’s one about both: a lady bug on an Opuntia blossom in the Mojave desert.  (Both photos A.Shock)

You can’t tell, but this particular prickly pear lives in a little piece of Nevada jammed between Arizona and California.  Its chief attraction is that it’s also stuffed with Joshua trees, which we’re finding there are more of in the world than we ever thought:

…our aphid-infested herb garden.

Last week, we found a lady bug (AKA lady beetle, lady bird beetle) wandering around on the ground; we scooped her up and put her on a cilantro plant badly infested with aphids.  A few days later, the flower stalks of the plant were alive with the black-and-orange alligator-like larvae of the ladybug.  There were so many aphids on these stems, the larvae stuck around, pupated, and hatched into mint new beetles.  Here’s the process in photos (A & E Shock).

We didn’t think to look for eggs, so the first thing we saw was about two dozen larvae slurping up aphids on the cilantro plant.  In the picture on the right >>, the final instar of a larva (lower) is attaching itself to the stem in preparation of pupating.  The critter above it, which looks like a wrinkly beetle, is what it becomes: a pupa, waiting for the beetle inside to reach adulthood.

<< The next photo shows a newly-emerged adult beetle clinging to its empty pupal husk.  The unripe tomato color of its wings deepens as it dries, possibly in response to UV exposure.  Also, ghostly gray dots appear and darken along with the elytra.  The wings, pale yellow and transluscent, retract fully under the elytra, and the beetle is ready to trundle — or fly — off.

The photo below shows two empty pupal cases, the sun shining through them and split open like… well, like invertebrate pupal cases, abandoned where their larvae attached to the stem.

Finally, the familiar mature, deep red-orange, sun-spotted lady bugs spread out, looking for food and mates to start the cycle all over again (below).

Hard not to appreciate the aphids giving up their sticky little plant-sucking lives for such a delightful result.  And, thanks, ladybugs, for clearing out the thuggish aphids.  Not to anthropomorphize or anything…

Yesterday was a rich day; with all sensory input oddly and schizophrenically split between very early and very late.  The day ended after midnight with a fun and funky evening at the CD drop party for the Groove Noodles, a friend’s band.  But it started before dawn in the outdoors, on Queen Creek and in Devil’s Canyon, a rock-girt desert riparian corridor east of Phoenix.  E and I were part of a team censusing birds in Pinal County for North American Migration Count.  There were great birds — including 7 species of warbler, both passing through and staying to breed, as well as orioles, and tanagers.  But one of my favorite sightings of the day was this Canyon tree frog (Hyla arenicolor) hopping up a nearly vertical rock wall, as we too were rock-hopping up and down the trail-less creek bed, which still contained large pools and slow flow.  We had to rely on our hiking boots to stick us to the water-smooth cobbles, but the frog has large suction discs on the ends of its digits, visible even at a distance (top photo).  It looks as much like a spot of gray lichen as possible, until it moves.  It also has delightfully colorful markings in lichen green and orange on its under-belly and under-thighs, which you can see better in this photo to the left <<.  I’m thinking the rotunditude of this particular frog may mean she’s a gravid (egg-filled) female.

Canyon treefrogs are, as I’ve stated before, “quite a toadly frog.”

(Photos E.Shock.)

Says me: few plants are more gratifying than prickly pear cactus, Opuntia spp. At least, if you live in the desert, or any reasonably dry place.

Actually, even in not so dry places: we saw some naturalized in Aoteraroa (New Zealand), which seemed frankly bizarre, knowing how much rain that island gets (see the photo hanging off the very bottom of the post, like how NZ hangs off the bottom of the world).

And there are species that grow in cold-winter climates — like one that used to surprise me every time I saw it in the dry glades of Missouri.  It would lie down flat under the snow in winter, and just wait, hunkered down, for spring.  I seem to recall its Latin name was Opuntia humifusa, which at least sounds like it means that it grows stuck to the soil.

So, pretty much anywhere you live, there’s probably a variety of “pear” that will grow and bloom in your conditions, with little care other than a basic knowledge of what kind of light conditions it prefers, and how much moisture it requires or can tolerate. (Photos E.Shock; not color-enhanced)

The top two photos are of a couple of Opuntia blooming now in our yard.  The first one is Opuntia aciculata, or Chenille prickly pear, named after its deceptively velvety cinnamon spines called glochids; the other is a variety of Santa Rita prickly pear (Opuntia santa-rita), named after the southern Arizona mountains that are its home range.  The purple color of the pads is natural for this cactus if it’s allowed to grow with available moisture: it gets greener when it’s grown lushly, or in monsoon season when rain is more plentiful.

<< A naturalized “pear” growning in Rotorua, New Zealand.  Probably a sub-tropical species.  The plant it’s growing up into could be Manuka, famous for the honey bees make from it.

You may know that Opuntia pads are actually water-storing stems.  The plant’s leaves, sometimes only present for a short time as new pads are forming, grow on the edges and faces of young pads; you can see some tiny green-and-red leaves on the newest pads above the yellow flower on the Rita-pear above.