No Humans Allowed

I’m doubt anyone will guess what this mystery photo is:

You might guess the general nature this one:

I had fun with dirt and rocks again, this time building stairs and a trail out to the front yard. I also re-arranged some rocks in the creek to build a small pool:

I was apprehensive that it would be washed away in the next rain storm. We got that test last night. This is what 3+” of rain looks like:

That little pond is submerged under this angry brown maelstrom:

Amazingly, this morning showed the little pond survived:

A clue on those 2 mystery photos: there are no humans in this post. But I have plenty of critters. This one is doggy’s nemesis:

This one loves my computer monitor:

I’d like to say I caught this one in mid-flight with my super-classified camera equipped micro-drone:

But in truth I caught him crawling on a window. I convinced him (with a not-so-super-classified drug, commonly known as RAID), to pose for me on a plant leaf:

The fox made another visit:

Hard to believe he is related to this guy:

On the other hand, I guess humans share 88% of our genes with a mouse, so …

We also share 65% of our genes with a chicken. Doggy has slimed up his chicken toy so much we don’t like touching it anymore. I tried to teach doggy to play with a rope instead, but he had little interest. So I came up with this compromise:

That first mystery photo comes from the tails of these guys:

Helen’s parents inherited them in the fountain of the house they bought. They didn’t want them, but Fish Fan Helen did, even though we didn’t have a place to put them. So for now, we have them in an undersized aquarium on our deck:

I learned that Coy fish are basically carp that have been bread to be pretty.

If you release them back into the wild, they will revert back to a boring brown color, so the predators won’t find them in the water. I am embarrassed to admit we though the black one was a catfish until we got a better look at him. I felt like a terrible fish-racist:

The other mystery photo is from doggy’s right eye, which you might have guessed. The reflection would have been a hard guess. It is the tree house (our wooden porch) roof as he looked up: