At that moment the ladybird dropped to the ground. She drew her legs into her shell and lay still, feigning death. Dead or alive, she was equally appetizing; besides, the Lizard was familiar with that trick. He took her in his mouth and slowly chewed and swallowed her.
When the ladybird was partly digested the Lizard started a trip around his territory. A few steps brought him to a ledge, where he made an exciting discovery. Below on a sheltered terrace lay two human beings wrapped in blankets. They were waking from their sleep. The woman was quiet but the man threw off his blanket and sat up.
The Lizard was so delighted to have something new occurring that he felt sharp and quick all over. He ran down towards the strangers, mostly keeping out of sight but watching them from his slanting path as well as he could. He found some ferns in a granite cleft where he could hide and yet have a close view of the humans. They were slow and stiff until the man stood up and stamped one foot that was asleep. The movements of the man were quicker after that, so the Lizard became more cautiously alert. As the man began to fold his blanket he gave it a snap, which startled the Lizard and he flashed back farther beneath the ferns. When nothing else frightened him, he crept part way out again.
Now both the man and woman were on their feet and the Lizard sensed that they were going away. The little creature came out from his cover and streaked across the granite, close to the strangers. He stopped among some dead leaves and looked up at the people, willing to let them come a few steps nearer. Soon he would dart to a new nook, and then to another, keeping always just beyond the humans’ reach. But they did not even know of the exciting chase. Still talking, they walked away, down towards the rim of the Rock. If they saw the Lizard, they gave no sign.
A feeling of apathy seemed to sweep over him briefly. He stayed among the leaves until he had lost it. When he came out he was ready to begin the work of his day. That was the double task of filling his stomach and patrolling his territory.
On all Beetle Rock there was no other home-site quite so desirable for a lizard’s way of life. The den was in the center with a Jeffrey pine above it. The roots of the tree kept the air in the crevice moist and encouraged the growth of moss. In pockets of soil outside the crevice grew edible green plants: gilia and pentstemon, fennel, and a clump of Sierra asters.
The territory extended in each direction about as far as the pine tree’s shadow. This was not a large territory for a lizard, but it was large on Beetle Rock where rival lizards were willing to fight for each slab of the sun-warmed granite. On the canyon side the Lizard owned a wide, smooth terrace, and towards the forest border, a valuable gully.
Foraging in the gully was both safe and profitable. At the shallow end a lizard could take quick refuge in the litter under a low-branched manzanita. On the sloping sides he could dodge into granite cracks or under the fallen fir log that slanted into the cut. And in the bottom of the gully numerous little crannies opened among the scattered boulders.
Spiders and leaf-hoppers, beetles, giant carpenter ants, smaller ants and other insects swarmed over the fir log and through the debris of weathering leaves, pine needles, and pollen cones in the hollow of the gully. They furnished a dependable food supply for the Lizard and his mate.
There were other gullies on Beetle Rock, but none containing a decaying fir trunk. Neighboring lizards still made an occasional bold run down to the log. The one whose territory adjoined on the east seemed unable to give up the impression that he might yet win the gully. In one battle over the question he had lost his flexible tail. That had happened in April when the territory boundaries were being decided. By June eighteenth his rigid substitute tail had grown more than half an inch, but the challenger’s good sense had not increased accordingly. Once a week at least he came back to be taught with a few new nips and bites that the owner had no intention of moving out or of sharing the gully with another male.
The Lizard started the survey of his territory, as usual, at the lower border. He would be glad to add to the ladybird when he had a chance, but he was not ravenously hungry. He passed a golden-mantled ground squirrel sitting on a rock-pile, a pair of chipmunks chasing each other, and an Audubon warbler seeking insects on the edges of an incense cedar. These animals shared his territory, as he did theirs, and all accepted each other. What he would not have endured was the presence of another lizard, but he found none and gradually came in towards his gully.
He had a moment of terror when he saw the shadow of a bird slipping over the Rock and realized that he was far from cover if the shadow should be that of a red-tail. He froze, hoping to avoid being noticed, then sensed that the shadow was moving faster than a hovering hawk’s would. The shadow of the hawk was usually somewhere upon the mountain, but must now be darkening other granite fields, or wing-splashed trees, or the grassy shelters of the mice.
Carpenter ants were parading over the log in the Lizard’s gully, but they were common and easy to catch and he was in a mood to hunt. Soon he had found a spider spinning itself down from a branch of the manzanita. A leap and a snap and the Lizard had it in his mouth.
The Lizard liked to be quiet and warm as long as he could feel any food digesting, so he stayed beneath the manzanita for a while. The air was still within the tangle of branches, and the sun came through almost unbroken by the vertical leaves. From the dead brown needles, twigs, and leaf-mat under the Lizard’s nose, the heat drew a dusty, spicy odor.
When he felt the spider becoming a part of himself, the Lizard left the manzanita, for a ladybird and a spider did not make a morning meal. He licked up several of the ants and worked along a crack in the fir log, where he found a larva of a sow-bug and ate that. At the lower edge of the log, in a pocket of loose bark, he saw the Deer Mouse hiding. She was a stranger in his territory. The two pairs of eyes met, appraised and accepted each other. The Lizard jumped down into the bottom of the gully and lay among the leaves. Several easy victims crawled in front of him and continued to live because they were not appetizing.
The Lizard resumed his hunt. First he examined a growth of fennel on the side of the gully and next some clumps of grass along the rim. He ran from one green plant to another, coming ever a little closer to his eastern neighbor’s territory. Finally he dashed across the border, into his neighbor’s patch of golden-throated gilia. He found neither food nor excitement there, however, so he returned to his proper grounds.
Now he began hunting from one end of his territory to the other, covering the boulder surfaces in leaps. The sun heated him from above and the granite from below until his muscles were so limber that it seemed as if he could outrun any other creature. Released from his trap of cold, he flashed about with the brilliant movement so stimulating to his kind — as though hunger for speed as much as hunger for food were the impetus for his search. The terraces, like the gully, had cost him many a fight, but now that he could claim them, his greatest pleasure was to race upon them.
What finally tempted the Lizard’s taste was a leaf-hopper, a gamey, delicately tart green hopper. She was on a scarlet pentstemon, nibbling the edge of a leaf. All the Lizard could see from below were the tips of her working jaws. He leapt to take both leaf and hopper in his mouth. At the touch of his foot on the plant, however, the hopper jumped to a ledge above, and the Lizard missed her. From where he landed he could not see where she had gone. He sprang onto the ledge himself, but the hopper had disappeared.
The Lizard stood and looked around him. He had been too eager, had leapt too carelessly. Now his bright spirit seemed all collapsed. A small ant twinkled towards him on its red legs and the Lizard licked it up. But the ant wasn’t even a giant carpenter.
A scream struck suddenly through the air. The Lizard darted to the nearest crack in the Rock. There he lay, wary and still, as he listened to the Weasel and a golden-mantled squirrel battling.
They were on the slab in front of the Lizard’s hiding place. Twice he saw the whirling, clutching bodies cross the granite. The squirrel was familiar to the
Lizard, for it lived in a rock-pile in his territory. At first its shrieks and the snarls of the Weasel told that the fight was going evenly. But the squirrel’s cries grew more desperate, while the Weasel’s ceased. Then there were no more cries, no sounds. The warm stone and the sun were like the stone and sun of a dead world.
The silence flowed past. The Lizard closed his eyes, for the sharpness of his fear had left him tired. Finally the song of a robin rose in the thicket. Gradually it loosened the voices of other creatures.
The Lizard crept out on the open granite and relaxed, at right angles to the sun. The heat seemed to reach his very heart. Yet there was a limit beyond which it would not be safe to let his temperature rise. For a while he kept it down by lightening his color so that his scales reflected, rather than absorbed, the sunshine.
As he became lighter he became brilliant in color. Green stripes appeared on his back and around his tail. The yellow on his sides was bold. If he had raised himself to impress another lizard with his throat- and belly-spots, they would have flashed an iridescent blue.
In beauty as well as energy, the Lizard was the sun’s creature. He must wait for its touch before he could fully live, and must give up his liveliness when the sun withdrew. But now its heat was becoming dangerously intense; even the Lizard’s color-control could not protect him from it. He had begun to move towards a shady crack when the granite ahead seemed to lift in a gray wave, which came sweeping forward, catching him in a swirl of sand and dust. The early breeze had died but a new damp wind was rising.
Above the treetops had appeared a higher mountain, hugely soft and white. It spread so fast up the sky that it could not be missed by even a small, prostrate creature accustomed to watching the surfaces level with his eye. Soon after the Lizard noticed the cloud, it hid his sun.
Now he must find a nook quickly, for raindrops soon would be slapping the Rock. A lizard caught in any downpour might be swept away, over the Rock’s rim, into a brook that would carry him to the river. At least a sheet of chilly water was sure to come streaming down the granite.
The Lizard hastened towards his den, running on the tips of his slender toes, making a single line of flowing silken movement, his tail held out so lightly that it gave to every leap a finish of perfect grace.
He came to the grasses near his crevice, circled them, and when he had reached the opening looked inside. His mate was gone. He entered. Though his companion was missing, something was there, something new — a pair of eggs, each nearly as large as his own head. They were lying on the moss.
The Lizard never had seen eggs before. Cautiously he went over to them and touched them with his tongue. They were soft. He darted away from them, across the den, where he lay in a far crack holding off the strange white objects with his eyes.
When the eggs continued to remain quiet, the Lizard dared to turn his attention to the crevice opening. Being a lizard, he regarded his mate as a permanent companion. She no longer excited him, but she pleased his eye when she moved and added to his sense of comfort when the sun went down and they crept to the back of the den to sleep. The gathering of the storm would normally have caused her to return, so that her absence now was as strange as her discomfort earlier had been.
She appeared in the entrance as the first drops fell. The Lizard watched her while she found herself a soft bed on the moss inside and relaxed, curling her tail up her side with a look of delicious ease. She ignored the eggs.
The crevice was dry and snug, for it sloped enough to prevent the moisture from draining in. Sometimes the rain splashed as it hit the granite near the opening. The Lizard blinked when it struck his face; otherwise he kept his eyes on the pelting water, which came down faster and faster, breaking into a fine spray on the rock. The fennel outside kept dipping under the heavy drops, then springing back. And lightning flashed, brightening the den. The Lizard’s scales grew light again because the lively movement was so exciting to him.
The storm slackened. For a while the Lizard could still hear the din of rain and thunder, then even that disturbance ceased. The sun came out and the only sounds were the water dripping on the granite and the small horn of a red-breasted nuthatch, piping its one note from the forest wall.
The Lizard left his crevice. Vivid and clean were the chickarees’ piles of red cone scales, the yellow and violet plates of the pine bark, and the grasses, and green leaves of the manzanita, chinquapin, and mountain cherry. The Rock steamed in the patches where it was not yet dry.
The air was becoming warmer, but the Lizard waited for a while beneath the fennel. Its stalks bent over him, enclosing him in a little sky of bright wet stars.
When the sunshine was sure again, the Lizard ran up over the Rock to the highest point in his territory. This granite knob was his favorite lookout for hopper, snake, hawk, or lizard-challenger. These were slow in appearing after the storm, but the Lizard’s temperature, and with it his energy, were rising as the air became warm. He lifted himself on all four legs and compressed his sides so that his throat and belly bulged and made him look tremendously impressive. When no male lizard happened by to be intimidated by this fine display, he relaxed on the surface of the granite.
Yet he was restless. Other animals were coming out of their retreats and in their various ways were expressing relief at the storm’s passing. They were delayed for a short time by a commotion near the Weasel’s den, but as soon as that was over a robin chased a chickaree through a fir, one of the deer marched up the Rock with an exceedingly high step, and the jays dove through the pines in slanting, motionless flights like blue sunbeams.
The Lizard moved a little way along the ledge. Next he ran back and sprang on the trunk of an incense cedar. He circled it a few times with increasing speed, dropped off and went bounding over his widest granite terrace. Now he was flying about with an almost angry swiftness, darting in one direction then, when he’d caught his breath, whirling back, as if he were dispatching an intruder for the final time. Gradually he worked his way towards the eastern border of his territory.
As the Lizard and his neighbor had settled the question, their boundary lay along the edge of the pollen cones fallen from a ponderosa pine. The trunk of the pine was in the neighbor’s grounds; the Lizard’s came to an end at the outermost of the cones.
This day, however, the Lizard proceeded straight through the cones to the base of the tree. The Grouse was picking up the pollen capsules, breaking out their yellow dust wherever she stepped. The Lizard glanced at her, then paid no further attention to her. He leapt on the trunk of the tree, ran up a short way, then down and back to the ground. Suddenly he saw that his neighbor lizard was watching from the bed of gilia. As if his presence on the tree had not been impudent enough, he challenged the neighbor by throwing out his throat and belly to display his blue spots.
The neighbor dashed into the circle of cones. Instantly the Lizard was back on the tree trunk, spiralling up, down, and up again, a whirling streak, always out of reach, always by quick genius on the opposite side from the owner of the pine. Three times the chase took the pair as high as the branches, the Lizard always leading. On the next descent he jumped to the earth. His neighbor dropped beside him. Immediately the two were skirmishing among the pollen capsules. A yellow cloud hung over the ground, so that neither could see distinctly, but still they found each other and escaped each other.
Dry leaves from an oak tree had settled among the cones. They too were flying. Their crackle was attracting attention all over the end of Beetle Rock. Among the eyes that looked to see what was happening were a coral king snake’s. When the snake found two lizards absorbed in fighting each other, he slid rapidly forward.
The Jay was watching the battle, but he did not fail to discover the snake. He screamed a warning. The combatants did not listen, and knew nothing of their danger until the snake’s head struck.
The head came down between them. Both lizards tried to dart away. More than once when the snake had captured a lizard his teeth ha
d gripped only a discarded tail, so now he gave all his effort to catching the one with the stump, the owner of the tree. When this victim found himself in darkness he tried to work free, but the snake’s curved teeth were hooked into his scales, and the jointed jaws moved forward steadily to enclose him.
The Lizard was very content not to win the fight with his neighbor. As soon as he saw the snake, he raced away to the safety of his gully. There he stopped in the leaves beneath the manzanita to regain his breath. Later he moved up cautiously to his den. His mate was lying at the entrance and he stretched out near her on the granite.
For the rest of the afternoon the Lizard was quiet. His instinct now was to get himself in balance — to recover his energy and compose his nerves. He let the sunny day go. His short months of wakefulness were at their peak, but he gave up the granite sparkles, the spiders, the lively chipmunks, the wavery white butterflies, and other delightful, keen sensations, and allowed himself to be carried away from them in sleep.
As the light was becoming mellow, hunger roused him and he returned to his gully. He did not try to catch any jumping insects but he ate a few of the ants.
When he came back to his crevice the sun was slanting into the opening. He crawled inside and lay on the moss, out of the breeze, yet in rosy warmth.
His companion came in, too. After the sunshine left the den the temperature dropped quickly. Degree for degree the lizards became as cold.
Soon they were asleep. The end of their day was a chilling and numbing like the gradual loss of life — at the time when swallows were skimming the richest insect harvest from the air, when chipmunks raced as boldly as if the sunset were a cover, and the ears of the Mule Deer flicked to catch every twilight-sharpened sound.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 9
