Category Archives: Saturday’s Critters

Closing Out 2021

I love the time between Christmas and New Years Day. The days leading up to Christmas are all in a rush especially if somebody in the family gets ill. Afterwards you can relax a little bit hopefully. I took advantage of one bright, sunny, day and went on a bike ride.

One of my favorite trails is alongside a turnpike on one side and fields and farms on the other. I ran into a mutt and jeff combination of horses.

You got the little one, all cute and fuzzy.

And the older one, both looking for something better to eat than the dry grass on offer.

I got to the end and rested a bit in the shadow of a billboard.

When I came home, this guy was waiting for me. iNaturalist tells me that this is a Coopers Hawk. He was using our mailbox as an observation perch. We have lots of squirrels and bunnies in the neighborhood and he was looking to eat one of those cute little critters.

Hey you know, cute little critters don’t live forever and hawks have to eat to right?

Are you on instagram? If so, are we following each other? My handle is @yogiab. These are my top nine posts for the year. I love instagram.

Do you live close to Tulsa? Come join in the First Day Hike and Scavenger Hunt on Turkey Mountain. It was supposed to be New Year’s Day but we postponed it until Saturday, January 8th from 8 am to 5 pm. Check out this facebook post for the details. We are hiding the above repurposed jewel boxes for people to find. They are going to have various Turkey Mountain stickers and key rings to find. There are also going to be a bunch of tee shirts hidden on the trails for people to find.

Do you like the cd cases. I repurposed them and designed and printed new covers and the liner notes are the Leave No Trace seven principles. I hope that I am not spoiling the surprise. The RiverParks Authority posted the photo on their website so I figured I can post my own photo on my site.

That’s about it for now. I wish everybody a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous 2022. Take Care!

I am linking with the following memes. They are all fun so check them out!!

Saturday’s Critters hosted by Eileen.

Shadow Shot Sunday 2 hosted by the Magical Mystery Teacher.

And Our World Tuesday hosted by Lady Fi

Lizzie Loves Christmas Trees

Our cat Lizzie has always liked Christmas. In particular the trees. She used to climb them but she is too fat do that now. Still when we put them up she shows up and gives them a good sniffing.

She has to check out fake evergreen closely.

My wife bought new cushions for the chairs in the front room where the big tree is. Lizzie loves them. She would rather lean on something than lay on it.

Time for a nap. I’m wondering if she is dreaming of sugar plums.

I am linking with Eileen’s Weekend Critters. Come join in!

Weekend Critters – Queen of the House

Our Lizzie thinks she is a queen. Whenever we fold towels, she always shows up and rests her elbows on them. Doesn’t take kindly to being told to move.

She is such a brat.

Abby likes pillows too.

We have been inundated with rabbits this year. This was followed by hawks. I’m not sure who is going to win. My money is on the hawks.

And a bonus. Here is our patio with the blue chairs from about 35 meters or so.

Also at the request of several fellow bloggers I got my web site security upgraded to the https protocol. I hope that helps. I know several bloggers that have that protocol who’s sights causes my security system to warn me. Just so much I don’t understand about all this.

I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday Critters

Hawk in the Neighborhood

This year we have lots of rabbits and squirrels in the neighborhood and now we have a predator. It likes to get on roof gables and powerlines and screech and then swoop. I took a partial differential equations class back in college and one of the problems they had us work on is the mathematical relationship between the numbers of prey and predators. Turns out there there is no happy equilibrium. It cycles, the number of prey increases which after a delay increases the number of predators, and then they gobble up all the little cute prey animals and then the predators starve and the cycle starts anew.

I think it is a red shouldered hawk but I am in no way a birder so if somebody has a better id then please let me know. I submitted the pics to inaturalist dot org and they are waiting for more community ids. So it saw something, screeched and went swooping into a neighbor’s yard for something.

I’m linking up with Eileen’s Saturday‘s Critters

Weekend Critters – Cottontails in the Back Yard

We found out this week that we have a Cottontail doe and at least two kits in our back yard. You can see one of the kits in the upper right corner of the photo above.

So that’s all great but we had a family earlier this spring and are two dogs got three of the four kits. I was pretty angry with them but dogs do what dogs do. We are keeping our dogs away from this latest family.

Which is fine but now we have a hawk hanging around the backyard now and we think it might have got one of the babies. Hawks have to eat, I get it, and they have babies that need fed also. Nature is kind of mean sometimes.

Here’s Lizzy. She doesn’t go outside. You can tell she is not missing too many meals. She is grumpy because I was trying to get a shot of her sleeping and it woke her up.

I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday Critters. Come join the fun!!

Backyard Critters

When the pandemic started last year and work and everything else shut down my family started spending lots of time in our backyard. It was great. Safe and secure from covid, or so we thought, we talked and noticed that as we get calm the backyards critters appeared. This year, things are a lot more hectic but Friday night we hung out in our back yard and the critters reappeared.

A male cardinal showed up. They are quite the Romeos, singing their love songs.

And a mockingbird. They imitate other birds.

A rabbit showed up and stayed quite a while. Looking around and giving itself a thorough grooming.

It was very flexible. I’ve taken lots of yoga classes this year cuz I think my flexibility might be my biggest issue as I get older. This rabbit doesn’t need to worry.

It groomed and groomed for over 30 minutes and we left it to its further grooming. That has to be the cleanest rabbit in Tulsa.

Heather made a new friend today. What we think is a house wren. We are not birders so if you have better information we welcome it.

When Heather goes outside, the wren shows up and sings to her.

For such a small bird, it makes a big sound. We are in love with this little critter.

And we have our everpresent squirrels. This guy froze on our back fence for five minutes before it left.

We love rediscovering that if we just go outside and be quiet for a few minutes then nature reappears.

We are linking with Eileen’s Saturday Critters. Come join us!!

A Trip to the Tulsa Zoo

The other day on a cold, sunny, brisk day we went to the Tulsa Zoo for an outing.

We saw lots of critters including this Caiman.

And a couple of Mexican Beaded Lizards.

Lots of different kinds of rattlesnakes. We are no strangers to rattlesnakes in Oklahoma. There are lots more outside the zoos than inside.

A Komodo Dragon

This was son Logan’s favorite, A Fennec Fox, taking a nap.

And some goats.

A hungry looking Tiger.

And a beautiful regal Lion.

It was a great way to get out of the house safely. They are regulating the number of visitors at any one time and have mask mandates for the inside exhibits. All the other visitors were complying with the masks and spacing requests. You can’t just walk up to get in you have to get a reservation. Check out TulsaZoo.org for more information.

I’m linking with Saturday Critters come check it out.

Saturday’s Critters – Squirrels

I was out walking in Washington Irving Park Thursday and came across this squirrel noisily eating his lunch. He just sat there and watched me and when I finally got a little closer, he decided to move on.

Squirrel original-DeNoiseAI-denoise-studio — It looks pretty fat.

The day or so before I was on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain and heard kind of chittering noise and I looked around and saw this squirrel. Eating heartily. I apologize for the terrible quality of the video but I just had my cell phone.

The squirrels out in the woods seem more tolerant than those in our back yard. What’s is up with that? It might be our dogs. They love chasing after the squirrels.

I’m very thankful that I have my health and can take long walks in the woods.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters

Lizzie the Rattlesnake Cat

This is Lizzie our sweet little rescue kitten. I know that three year old cats are not kittens but that is what we call her. Somebody through her the window in a parking lot. She’s sweet but she doesn’t like to be held unless she is in the mood. And she is never in the mood.

During a yawn she goes into scary rattlesnake cat mode.

She’s not amused.

I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters

Saturday’s Critters – Puppy Yoga

Once every six months or so our gym has a special class, “Puppy Yoga” in the courtyard where a non-profit dog shelter brings a bunch of puppies in for a special yoga class, “Puppy Yoga.” The members pay an extra $10 to take the class with the money going to the non-profit.

There is the only other guy in the class. People called me a good sport for some reason. I love puppies, especially other people’s puppies.

The dogs were little beggars. The volunteers were handing out treats to the attendees and we were shook down by the dogs and as soon as we gave them all away then they had nothing to do with us, the little beggars.

Smiles all around everywhere.

The instructor had 26 animal themed yoga poses for us. I don’t remember them all but you know, up dog, down dog, cat, cow, pigeon, crow (for the more adept students, and so on. She made it a lot of fun.

Sometimes if you could grab a puppy you just did the hold puppy pose. This is my wife doing just that.

And then my turn.

Everybody had a lot of fun. The dogs were exhausted at the end. I’ll be back the next time they have it.

Toward the end, a wasp crashed the party and stung me pretty good. Before the night was over my foot swelled up and turned red. My wife rescued me with some antihistamines. I went home and further treated it with a couple of my favorite beers.

I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters

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