Alligator lizard does not scuttle fence lizard-like, but propels himself by undulations through the grass like a quick garter snake.
His resemblance to a short-bodied snake may be an evolved strategy to cause would be predators a second thought.
He has an unsettling presence, a double soul at once lizard and prototypical snake. He seems to be on his way to becoming something else - perhaps a member of that strange tribe- the legless lizards.
There is an uncanniness of affect like that of a shape-shifting inter-gender being. Could he have been recognized as a two spirit by the local Indian berdache?
I mowed hay on April 30.
Two of Kelseyville's antique objects - a Model T hotrod outside the venerable Brick Tavern.
Scenes from the meadow in Springtime.
Perennially listed among the top ten best bass fishing lakes in North America, ancient Clear Lake is sometimes called Number One. But don't eat your catch! Tailings from an old mercury mine were pushed into the lake, where the gyre of the waters has universally distributed the toxin throughout the sediments. Here it enters the food chain at it's foundation, to be taken upwards into the tissue of invertebrates and vertebrates alike.
English (originating in Persia) walnut grafted onto California black walnut, a common sight in the commercial groves of Lake County.
