Showing posts with label lizards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lizards. Show all posts

16 January 2014

Creatures Along The Way



When you ride off-road—or even on roads or paths that cut through flora and fauna—you are bound to encounter creatures great and small.

Here in New York, if you ride through or near a park—or any place with more than a couple of trees—you’ll see squirrels.  Most of them will simply avoid you.  The same is true of chipmunks.  In fact, most creatures you might encounter in or around this city really don’t want to go anywhere near you.  They include the deer that have darted or loped across my path just on the other side of the George Washington Bridge and in the leafy parts of Westchester County.

In fact, most of the animals that venture near you are sick or otherwise impaired, or dying.  That includes the large rat that went “thwop” against the side of my Deep-V rim when I sliced through late-summer haze along the flat stretch on the east side of Prospect Park.  At that time—around 2001—there’d been a number of construction projects near that side of the park and, as someone explained to me, the excavations opened up various Pandora’s boxes.

Far more charming—and healthier—were the oak bark-colored mountain goats that seemed to line up along the side of the road up the Col du Portillon/ Coll de Portillo on the border between France and Spain.  I half-expected them to chuckle:  After all, they climbed that mountain every day.  And they didn’t have a 36X28 gear!

Handsome creatures they were. But for sheer cuteness, none beat the tiny green lizards that darted across my path during my last ride of my most recent trip to Florida.  You see them any warm day.  I’ve tried photographing them but they’re too quick.  That’s also the reason why I’ve never run any over.

I also saw a few armadillos.  However, they didn't try to come anywhere near me.  

Of course, anyone in any kind of vehicle—whether powered by one’s own feet or an internal combustion engine—runs the risk or has the opportunity to see, meet, dodge or bump into creatures of one kind or another.  It also doesn’t matter whether those vehicles are on land, in the air or on the water:



I actually came within a couple of feet of a manatee once.  I was swimming in Matanzas Inlet (which, to tell you the truth, I probably wasn’t supposed to do) on one of my first trips to the Sunshine State.   The creature, which looks something like a walrus without the mustache or the public relations, gave me a shy, quizzical look.  I liked it in the same way I like wrinkly dogs and shaggy cats. I assume other people feel the same way.

I wonder how it would have reacted to me if I’d been on my bike.

09 April 2012

Whatever Doesn't Stop Us, Slows Us Down

All right.  So I've slowed down, and I can't blame it all on riding a cruiser.  I also won't make the excuse that I'm enjoying the sunshine, blue skies and surf, although I am indeed reveling in those things.

I won't even blame the not-much-longer-than-my-hand lizards that darted across my path in Painters Hill.  I must say, though, that I found myself thinking of Geico commercials, even though I have absolutely no reason to buy auto insurance.

However, there is one thing I can blame for slowing me down momentarily.


This adorable (in his/her own way, anyway) creature wandered into my path after a few lizards played chicken with my wheels.  What he/she expected to find in the path, I'll never know.  That particular stretch of path is bounded by tall grass that ends on the banks of the Florida Intracoastal Waterway, which parallels the Atlantic beaches on the other side of the path and Route A-1A. 

Perhaps my armored friend was confused or trying to evade a less likeable creature.  Or, perhaps, he/she didn't find any edibles to his or her liking, and thought that a cyclist might be carrying some tasty carbohydrates.  In fact, I wasn't, as I was trying to burn off the lunch I had with Mom and one of her friends, and build an appetite for dinner, which would consist of leftovers from Easter dinner.  Fortunately, said dinner consisted of foods that taste better the second or third day.

Mr./Ms. Tortoise rowed along the path on front legs that were more like flippers, and back into the tall grass.  Then the lizards darted out, and the ocean seemed to deepen in a shade of turquoise at the end of a surprisingly desert-like dune.