OK. You do lots of weird things when you're on the road alone and trying to keep your mind off of your suffering. One of things I did this trip was keep track of critters. Mostly dead ones, that is.On this trip I saw the following roadkill: 1 white tail deer, 4 coyotes, 4 striped skunks, 2 jack hares, 1 cottontail rabbit, 1 javalina, an unknown number of small rodents, 1 gopher snake, and 1 horned lizard.
There were a handful of vultures flying overhead (I think they were scoping me out). There were also several ravens, one of which was sitting on the side of the road and bigger than you'd expect. From a distance I wasn't sure if it was a bird or a medium-sized mammal!
At one point, just to illustrate once again how windy it was, I rode alongside and then passed (yes, I said passed!) a kestrel. In case you don't know, the kestrel (my favorite bird of prey) is America's smallest falcon. Yes, falcon. As slow as I was going the wind was making a falcon struggle even more slowly. Now that's windy!
One other guy I saw was this insect. He was about a half inch long and beautiful. He's a hemiptera of the Coreidae (family of leaf-footed bugs) called Chelinidea vittiger. He stowed away on my front pannier and let me carry him up one of the biggest hills of the day. I was going to take his picture and then eat him, just to teach him a lesson, but while I was putting the camera away he disappeared. Probably a mind reader. An incredibly lazy, opportunistic mind reader. According to Carl Olson, the University of Arizona "Bugman," it is found feeding on pads of prickly pear. If you stop and check pads around, you may notice small white spots which are the result of their feeding. Cool, huh?
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