Friday Night 'Lights'

Mr. Wizard and I both made it home last night BEFORE dark--an amazing accomplishment on a 'school night.' Yay for us! The kitties were a tad confused, but very happy. They had stayed outside all day and just as the sun was setting, Paco managed to catch a field mouse in the maze of cane near the north end of our driveway.

It's hard for me to watch one of our cats kill a mouse. It can be a long, drawn-out affair while he plays with his trophy, allowing it to run a short distance away and then pouncing on it to catch it again. This goes on for awhile until the poor mouse is just too exhausted to play that game. Fortunately, last night Paco didn't play that long. He did manage to sneak the poor thing into the house through his pet door, and I chased him down and carried him, mouse in his mouth, back outside. He was so proud of himself.

After he'd eaten his kill and all the kitties were safely inside for the evening, I walked the perimeter of our yard to pick up scattered limbs and debris that had fallen or blown in during the week. And surprise! This is what I saw through the cane at the south end of our yard:


So I grabbed my little camera and snapped a few shots of the sunset. Only a few because the wind was picking up, bringing in a cool front that hit with a gale of winds that lasted all night. In fact, it's still blowing and it's mid-morning now as I write this.

We've had some beautiful sunsets and sunrises lately, thanks to the cloud formations, of course, and also because of the blowing dust in the air. It's awfully dry; we've had no rainfall since September, making this a more 'normal' desert year, complete with mandatory county-wide burn ban.

Because it's so dry and because Lunaloca is surrounded by a drip irrigation system that sustains our trees and plants, we've had many critters visiting of late, mostly javelina, deer and coyote. The past five nights, coyotes have serenaded us with their cacophonous yips and howls from just across the dry creek to the east. I love their enthusiastic sounds punctuating the quiet desert nights, but only when I know our kitties are safely indoors and out of their reach.

In this last shot, if you squint, you might be able to make out the crescent moon high in the sky.

If this shot had sound effects, you'd hear the wind howling and roaring, bringing chaos to Lunaloca and the Christmas Mountains.