Garden guardian confounds local wildlife

CRITTER TAIL



BEWARE!—The writer’s new garden ornament is a toy pelycosaur known as a Dimetrodon, a carnivorous sail lizard that trod the earth even before the dinosaurs. It makes a bold statement residing on a rock amid the garden pansies.

BEWARE!—The writer’s new garden ornament is a toy pelycosaur known as a Dimetrodon, a carnivorous sail lizard that trod the earth even before the dinosaurs. It makes a bold statement residing on a rock amid the garden pansies.

It’s astonishing how an item purchased for 99 cents at a thrift store can develop a life of its own.

The new Goodwill store in Newbury Park is, to borrow from Hemingway, “a clean well-lighted place.” So much so that from 100 paces out, I spotted what I thought might make a naturalistic lizard ornament for my garden.

On closer inspection, the reptile was actually a prehistoric creature, and not one that exactly generated a “welcome to my garden” vibe.

It was painted in flaming scarlet and gold hues, had formidable claws, a large open mouth bristling with many teeth and a dragon-like fin on its back.

Turns out that the British company that manufactured these hard, heavy plastic toys in Hong Kong circa the 1970s mislabeled them. On the belly of this beast was imprinted “Edaphosaurus” but after my keen-eyed friend Jet surfed the Internet, we concluded that this fierce fellow bearing convincing “bloodstains” on several teeth and inside its mouth was not an Edaphosaurus, which is a small-headed herbivore, but the carnivorous cousin to that species called a Dimetrodon.

The latter preyed on the former, and they are known as sail-backed pelycosaurs or sail lizards that inhabited the earth many millions of years before the dinosaurs.

So the garden ornament candidate had quite a resume for something intended to be lodged among my pansies.

It made a bold statement, with that garish load of red paint, blue eyes, whopping jaws and a thing attached to its spine that would’ve made “The Flying Nun” envious, although the pelycosaur’s “sail” had nothing to do with flight.

Scientists still can’t agree on the sail’s precise purpose, but whatever it’s there for, it is adding to the impression the Dimetrodon is making on my humble rural Agoura growing grounds.

The creature resembles the kaiju (monster) from Japanese sci-fi flicks, and so that became its name.

My dog refuses to walk anywhere near it. His hackles rise when he spots it, then he quivers in fright, whines, turns and heads in an alternate direction.

Little frightens the audacious scrub jays and crows, but even they are giving Kaiju, the scarlet sail lizard, a worried glance and wide berth.

The tree squirrels that have been digging up my flowerpots to plant their acorns finally are getting their comeuppance. I keep shifting Kaiju from container to container to intimidate the pesky excavators.

Here’s an immobile lizard much larger than any the squirrels have encountered, whose texture is too tough for them to nibble on as they do my patio chairs’ seat cushions, and what’s with that weird slippery scalloped growth on its spine?

Preoccupied at these speculations, the confounded squirrels retreat, sparing my flowerpots.

Reach Glasser at ranchomulholla@gmail.com.


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