Tag: Creatures Among Us

Like an actor parting the curtains, a Texas tortoise took the stage from behind foliage near the visitors’ center at Palo Alto Battlefield one steaming August day, its curvy forelegs pigeon-toed, its back ones, elephantine.

This wide-eyed thrush—pot-belled, brown-spotted and robin-like in posture—traipsed among eager photographers at the South Padre Island Convention Center one October. It, like other migrants resting and refueling during their southward journey, looked weary.

The snowy egret slipped its yolk-yellow feet, toes first, into waters of the saltmarsh and strode across, stealthy and alert, ready to strike.

The long-tailed, striped lizard, its limbs splayed out like a gecko’s, suddenly materialized on the porch as I swiveled back from watering the birds.

We lifted a small log, one with critter-enticing voids and cracks, exposing an expected assortment of busy creatures—beetles, ants, silverfish and roly-poly’s. But, amid them, to my surprise, squirmed a dark, glossy worm. What is an earthworm doing in a Harlingen yard in this arid climate? I thought. I rarely see worms here.

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word! Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird!” begins a cherished lullaby. Yet, one wonders: why would anyone buy a mockingbird when its melodies tumble from treetops for all to enjoy? And the folk song apparently originated in the South, the mockingbird’s original realm.