The Field

Old, old litter

Cleaned up 1 bag full today, 1 large item (which, ironically, was a trash can).  Of note among today's catch is a thirty year old Pepsi can.  It was right on the surface of the ground, near the sidewalk.  It was also near a prairie dog hole, so perhaps a prairie dog turned up this little time capsule.  It's badly crunched up, but the red and blue is still vibrant and the type legible.  There's an circular emblem on the front with a "76" in it, "1876-1976" along the top and "Centennial" along the bottom.  I think it may be noting the centennial of Colorado's statehood, as the background is blue mountains.  On the reverse side of the can it says "CONGRATULATIONS DENVER NUGGETS 75-76 ABA REGULAR SEASON CHAMPIONS," and has a portrait of one Jimmy Foster, #16, Guard, 6'1" 180, Connecticut.  A six-foot-one basketball player.  Huh.  It's the old style of pop can -- thicker aluminum, not tapered at the ends, with the small triangular opening that must have been difficult to drink from.  I have previously found a similarly shaped Mountain Dew can that must be about the same age.  This is why we should heed the proverb printed on the top of the Pepsi can and "DON'T LITTER," because it doesn't pick itself up.  It will just sit there for THIRTY YEARS or until someone else cleans up after us.  As for the can, I think I'll finally fulfill the other request printed on the top -- "PLEASE RECYCLE".

Coyote sighting

Forget about the last post -- it's been hot and dry since.  However, I finally saw one of the coyotes in the field the other evening.  A distant siren sent them to howling, and I went to see if I could pinpoint the location of their den.  I only know about as much as I did before -- it's somewhere in the dense trees and shrubs near the creek -- but I saw one, briefly, bounding through the foliage before he disappeared into it.  I also found the thin little path they've made off of the trail to their den.  I followed it a few steps, and saw one of them looking back at me from the bushes.  It was too dark to see him well, but there he was.

On the way home I found a nice bat viewing spot, on the hill with them swooping mere feet overhead.  Bats are cool, and their acrobatics as they hunt mosquitoes are fun to watch. :)

Wet July (so far); slightly disconcerting ants

We seem to have received our wet spring weather a little late -- we had a rainy 4th, and I believe it's rained (or at least sprinkled) every day here since.  Some places in the mountains have had floods, but we've been enjoying the moisture and relatively cool weather.  I was actually wearing jeans and a light sweatshirt on Sunday!  It seems to be remembering what month it is now, though.  It's getting warmer this week, with clouds and brief showers coming late in the afternoon.  The forecast is to continue drying and warming.  It was nice while it lasted.  Actually, I've been hoping that we'll get enough precipitation this year to keep the prairie dogs from breaking out of their current boundaries and into the bluegrass of Mayfair park, because I'm pretty sure if that happens people will complain, and the city will promptly call in exterminators to get rid of all of them.  I don't want the colony to expand beyond a certain point, for its own good.  This year, some burrows have appeared dangerously close.  My hope is that they wont want to move down into a slightly wetter area, and the creek bed and the area around it, which gets standing pools of water sometimes, will act as a natural barrier to them. 

Today, on the edge of the trail near the Mayfair playground, I saw some ants of a sort which I do not recall ever seeing before.  They were larger than the local black ants, and pale red -- more orange than red, really.  And they didn't make little mounds, but large holes in the ground, maybe half an inch in diameter.  There were half a dozen holes or more within a few feet of each other, all swarming with ants.  There were many larger, winged males, awkwardly climbing up grass blades and taking flight in search of queens.  I've been trying to think of any time I've seen these before.  Maybe I have, but I can't think of any instance.  Fire ants haven't invaded this far north yet, right?  Please tell me this is some harmless native species I'm not familiar with!

NO MOTOR VEHICLES

(That's what signs say at several entrances to the field.) 

Well, that wasn't a very relaxing walk at all, thanks to a pair of teenagers and their dirt bikes.  They rode all over the field and Mayfair park, leaving tracks in the grass and ruts in the trails, and turning the scent in the field from flowers to gasoline.  They passed me once and I tried to yell to them that they needed to take their bikes out onto the street, where they're actually legal, but to no avail.  They probably couldn't hear me over the roar of their muffler-less engines.  I would have liked to tell them that they live in a city, and have neighbors, and running their bikes in the open space and park is both illegal and inconsiderate -- to the people hoping to get away from noise like that, and the resident wildlife they're harassing.  Jerks.  It'd be nice if the parks and open space regulations were enforced.

I decided to go for a walk because the coyotes howled earlier, and I thought I could tell where it was coming from, so I thought I'd investigate.  They must have a den in the field.  I didn't find any evidence of them, though.  I also saw a plains garter snake (a little over a foot long) basking on a gravely area, and a large spider.