{"id":107,"date":"2009-08-24T13:09:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T18:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/08\/24\/090824_whiptail\/"},"modified":"2022-03-12T17:40:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-12T23:40:13","slug":"090824_whiptail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/08\/24\/090824_whiptail\/","title":{"rendered":"Jurassic Flowerbed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I stepped out the front door around noon to change some light bulbs and heard a rustling in the flowerbed. Given the number of rattlesnake sightings in our neighborhood this year, I was in no mood to assume the noise came from a beneficent source, so I tip-toed over&#8230;and spotted the fellow in the following photo, chowing down on a spider or fly (all I could see were the legs sticking out of his mouth). This is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zo.utexas.edu\/research\/txherps\/lizards\/cnemidophorus.gularis.html\">Texas spotted whiptail<\/a> and they&#8217;re quite common around here. They&#8217;ll also occasionally scare the daylights out of you as they&#8217;ll burrow underground during the heat of the day, and then explode out of the dirt if you&#8217;re digging in the vicinity. But, any enemy of spiders and flies is a friend of mine!<\/p>\n<p>Click on the first photo to see a larger and uncropped version.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/whiptail1_big.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/whiptail1.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of whiptail lizard\" width=\"640\" height=\"565\" vspace=\"3\"><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/whiptail2.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of whiptail lizard\" width=\"640\" height=\"416\" vspace=\"3\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I stepped out the front door around noon to change some light bulbs and heard a rustling in the flowerbed. Given the number of rattlesnake sightings in our neighborhood this year, I was in no mood to assume the noise came from a beneficent source, so I tip-toed over&#8230;and spotted the fellow in the following&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/08\/24\/090824_whiptail\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jurassic Flowerbed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-midland-odessa","category-nature","category-photography","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8703,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/8703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}