We are in a bowl of heat, ash, and fire...
Thousands of acres of forested and scrub hillsides have been burned to the ground, many are still burning. There have been red skys, blazing suns, ash on roofs and the hoods of cars parked outdoors, ash on the leaves of plants, and smells that would be comforting if only the wood burning was is the fireplace on a cold winter night...
No doubt GLOBAL WARMING has caused the fires. You know this but here's what happens. Plant life unable to get enough water to live dies, and so do ecosystems such as insects and creatures that feed on insects.
One morning as I and my neighbors walked our dogs we saw BLOODY PAWPRINTS and they were HUGE. Some of us tried to estimate how big the dog had to be and where they started and ended, following them a quarter of a mile on the cement. The animal had certainly been wounded. One person said "That has to be a human hand." Another said, "I think a huge raccoon - look at the nails." Another determined that it was indeed one paw and that the animal had tried to get into his yard. We decided that some poor big dog that was let out at night to do it's business might have gotten into a close-by construction site and injured itself. Someone else thought it had caught a foot in a trap. As neighbors up and down the street began to speculate, we decided to call these prints - which still exist and prove the injured animal may have been in pain and confused about where to go or what to do next in the middle of the night might be a HELLHOUND. Perhaps if we were living closer to the mountains we might think of this dog as a coyote.
There are coyotes in Southern California and sometimes you see one from the freeway. A friend who took in a huge German Shepard stray dog once considered that her female might have mated with one of them.
When you live up against mountains in Southern California, mountains such as the Santa Monica Chain, or the Sierra Madre, the Angeles Crest Forest, even if you're in a suburb that's citified, you have to keep watch on your pet dogs and cats and other creatures because a coyote would gladly have your pet for food. In some of these suburbs there signs up on trees and telephone polls with pictures of these "lost" pets on them and nobody wants to admit it but they probably got eaten. A bad way for your fluffy loved one to die.
I'm about ready to take some soapy bleach water and a scrub brush to the sidewalks. The blood smell, though old now, is still attracting pet dogs to sniff and follow.
But if seeing a coyote in neighborhoods up against the mountains, or following the concrete Los Angeles River isn't uncommon, why would such a large creature come all the way to where we live?
The answer is the fires and food.
Fleeing animals taking their chances or simply displaced from their natural surroundings where they are part of a group, have hiding places to sleep, and so on have been ruined.
We see no end, even if it begins to rain because the soil needs to be saturated with water. However, if it does rain this winter, there will be tremendous wild flower displays in the spring since these always compete for water and space with the larger scrub brush and trees.
Meanwhile, my dog and me have uncharacteristically been running the air-conditioning, but set at 86 degrees indoors. Since the air has been so polluted that the visibility of the mountains has been cloaked, it has become difficult to breath. We have both been laying about, me in my thinnest cottons. I cut her hair back and started giving her water dips to keep her cool.
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