&160; My neighbor Crandall stops by.

&160;

&8220;How are you doing?&8221;&160; I ask.

&160; &8220;Fair to partly cloudy,&8221; says Crandall.&160; &8220;I’ve never even met Carly Simon, but I do think that song is about me.&160; I borrowed my mother’s little car.&160; It’s called a Neon and I know why.&160; I had a knee on the steering wheel and a knee on the dash.&160; I ran over a nightcrawler with it and it messed up the suspension.&8221;

&160; &8220;Is that why you’re orange with white eye rings?&8221; I ask.

&160; &8220;Watch what you say.&160; I could whup a pen-full like you and guard the gate at the same time.&160; You are about as sharp as a bowling ball.&160; Your ignorance would make an onion cry.&8221;

&8220;I find your allegation hurtful and resent it with nearly every fiber of my being. I took a poll of all of the fibers of my being, and they all resented the allegation except for a single cotton fiber wedged under a toenail and a denim fiber lodged in my belly button. &160;I don’t necessarily disagree, I just resent it,&8221; I protest.

&160; &8220;I am not orange. I am tan. Still Bill got a tan while he was visiting in Arizona and it flung a craving on me. I decided to visit one of those tanning salons. I was under the lights a bit too long and those protective shades I wore left a big white circle around each eye. I’m a little touchy about it because of what the Guttormson boy said to me when I came out of the Grab and Gulp yesterday.&8221;

&160; &8220;What did he say?&8221;&160; I ask.

&160; &8220;I felt a tug on my shirt and looked down to see the rugrat staring up at me.&160; He asked, &8216;Are you giving out balloons?’&8221;

Yuma

I was speaking in Yuma, Ariz., in April and that gave me a chance to do some exploring of the nature of Yuma.

&160; Arizona has 350 species of butterflies.&160; There are about 800 species in the United States and approximately 9,000 in the world. Yuma County hosts 70 species. The state butterfly is the Two-tailed Swallowtail, a 4.5-inch across butterfly not found in the Yuma area.&160; The Giant Swallowtail looks like it has a big smile on it. The Checkered White is the most common butterfly, using mustard plants as hosts. The Mourning Cloak uses the willow as a host plant, while the larvae of the Red Admiral feed on nettles. The Painted Lady has been found on every continent. Butterflies are amazing. Monarch Butterflies winter in the forests of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. They begin their journey northward. They lay eggs and then die. This process continues until August and September when the monarchs head south.&160; These butterflies roost in the same grove of trees that their great-great- grandparents did.

&160; Yuma gets about 3 inches of rain each year.&160; The average annual temperature is 72 degrees.&160; Yuma was a river town, not the Wild West like Tombstone or Bisbee.&160; It’s on the Colorado River. Steamboat captains cleared all the willows and cottonwoods from the Colorado River.&160; They were later replaced by a non-native tree called the tamarisk (salt cedar) that causes problems because of its great thirst for water.&160; Willows and cottonwoods are being replanted.

&160; I found that shade is very important in Yuma, especially when parking a car.&160; Life is good as long as you park in the shade.

&160; The Yuma Territorial Prison became a favorite filming site for John Wayne.&160; Around 580 movies have been filmed in Yuma, including Lawrence of Arabia that was shot in the sand dunes.

&160; I saw only one rattlesnake.&160; In the U.S.A., there were 1912 rattlesnake bites in the last 10 years.&160; There were four fatalities.&160; You have a better chance of dying from a fall in the shower, being hit by lightning, or being done in by your spouse.&160; An expert told me that snakebite kits have proven to be a waste of time.&160; The best tools you can use are your car keys and your cell phone.&160;

&160; I visited Kofa (King of Arizona) Natioanl Wildlife Refuge.&160; I saw interesting petroglyphs.&160; Petroglyphs were drawings and etchings &160;done before men had ESPN to keep them occupied.&160; The Sonoran Desert provided enough cacti to meet any acupuncturist’s dream.

&160; Desert Bighorn Sheep have bodies that can shrink or swell up to 25 percent to allow for water loss or gain.&160; They need only drink every 3-4 days.

&160; The farms in the Yuma area buy water and are able to produce 7 crops of lettuce annually and 11 cuttings of alfalfa each year.

&160; Desert pupfish males turn an iridescent blue with yellow fins in the spring and summer.&160; These small fish are able to survive in wate&160; temperatures up to 113 degrees and in water saltier than sea water.

&160; The binoculars showed me such beautful birds as: Hermit Warbler, Lazuli Bunting, Bullock’s Oriole, Anna’s Hummingbird, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Western Tanager, Say’s Phoebe, Plumbeous Vireo, Gambel’s Quail, Burrowing Owl, and Phainopepla.

Birding or ticking

I was leading a birding group at Glacial Lakes State Park near Starbuck.&160; We were hoping to see some warblers.&160; We saw every kind of warbler as long as it was a Yellow-rumped Warbler.&160; There was no danger of contracting the dreaded &8220;warbler neck&8221; from looking straight up into a tree in the hopes of spotting one of the feathered jewels.&160; We were doing as much woodticking as we were warbling.&160; It gave us time to remember that male woodticks wear &8220;suspenders,&8221; while the female sports a &8220;necklace.&8221;&160; If we had had some duct tape, we could have placed each tick we’d gleaned from our bodies on a strip of the tape.&160; It would have been a ticker tape.

Did you know?

The Baltimore Oriole that returns to us each May was called &8220;the herald of spring,&8221; &160;by Alexander Wilson, a Scottish peddler and failed poet who became the father of American ornithology.

&160; The Brown Thrasher has over 1,000 songs in his repertoire.&160; He repeats things.&160; He sings, &8220;Hello.&160; Hello.&160; &8220;Who’s this?&160; Who’s this? I should say.&160; I should say.&8221;&160; I throw some peanuts on the ground where the thrashers are known to visit.&160; They love peanuts.&160; My father called them the &8220;farmer’s bird&8221; as he thought it sang, &8220;Plant, plant it.&160; Grow it, grow it.&160; Weed it, weed it.&160; Reap it, reap it.&8221;&160; The Brown Thrasher repeats itself as men my age are likely to do.

Alaska

You won’t believe the beauty of Alaska.&160; Please join me on a tour of Alaska on Aug. 10-17.

&160; For more information on this delightful trip, call

373-4705 or 800-328-4298.

Thanks for stopping by

&8220;The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.&8221; &045;&160; William F. Scolavino

&160; &8220;Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.&160; Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.&8221;&160; &045;&160;Betty Smith, &8220;A Tree Grows In Brooklyn&8221;

DO GOOD.

&160;

(Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.)