This concrete sculpture was in a field close to the Visitor Center of Petit Jean State Park. It is a work by Dionicio Rodriguez (1899-1955), whom I recognize from his extensive work at Memorial Park Cemetery here in Memphis and from The Old Mill in North Little Rock. I was delighted to see another work by him.
We saw a lot of animals at the park but didn't get photos of most of them. We saw deer, box turtles, gray squirrels, birds of several kinds (especially hummingbirds, buzzards, bluebirds, herons, and crows), blue-tailed skinks, snakes, lizards, and tadpoles. We decided Arkansas is a hotbed of raccoon suicides, where they throw themselves in front of cars. Dead raccoons littered the highways. The Younger Son got a few photos of wildlife:
My favorite, though, may well be this jackalope:
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I laughed at the pistol used to capture the jackalope. Sounds like a fun day. Also laughed at the racoon suicides. Wish they would do that here. We have an infestation of them in my neighborhood. An entire family was living under my front porch until I welded the air grate shut so they couldn't get in again.
ReplyDeleteWe got such a kick out of the jackalope lol!
DeleteIt was so odd seeing all those dead raccoons. They are a pest, but not so much in the city here in Memphis. I can't remember ever seeing one in our current neighborhood, but in another area we lived in there were white raccoons that some of the neighbors would feed. They were shocked when the raccoons made a home in their attic. What did they expect! lol
There are a few populations of raccoons in Europe, runaways from fur farms, but none in Sweden that I know of. We call them "tvättbjörnar", washing bears, because they apparently like to dip their food in water before they eat it. I find that green butterfly your son photographed very intriguing, does it have a name?
ReplyDeleteThe Luna moths are big and wonderful! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actias_luna We never see them in the city for some reason, but we've seen them out in wooded areas.
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