DESERT BACKYARD WILD LIFE

The Stoodys of Tucson have evening visitors. DESERT

I was as dubious as other friends of Stoody, portrait photographer in the Old Pueblo, when I first heard that deer, rabbits, skunk, quail, and foxes were regular callers in his backyard. After all, his house is less than 8 miles from the Pima County Courthouse in Tucson. And even when all the visitors are gone and we were left to ourselves in the summer months, the Old Pueblo isn't exactly a deserted village. Besides, while even strangers know that Northern Arizona teems with wildlife, there are natives who'll swear nothing lives on the Southern Arizona desert except horny toads and gila monsters. Anybody who stillbelieves that ought to spend an evening with the Stoodys. Stoody he may have a first name, but even his button-sized wife, Rachel, calls him that originally intended simply to prove that wild animals show up in his backyard, frequently and in considerable variety. But some of his first pictures turned out so well he's developed a wildlife portraiture hobby. The result is a hobby that puts a crimp in the social life of the Stoodys. They've often spent seven nights of the week watching and photographing wild animals. Fortunately, Rachel is just as enthusiastic about their backyard visitors as is her husband.

BACKYARD Wildlife

The evening I spent with them is typical. We left their downtown studio and ate dinner in town. Since they've started photographing animals, the dining-table has been moved into a corner away from the living room window, because its regular location, in front of this window, is the best one from which to shoot pictures. Besides. the table is always covered with flash-bulbs, film, and other photographic paraphernalia. It's a nuisance to clear it off for no better reason than to eat dinner. When they do eat at home nowadays, they use the kitchen table. We drove out well-traveled Silverbell Road to theirsmall house in the desert. It's in a fairly populated area there are houses visible in several directions. Of course the 28,000 Tucson Mountain County Park adjoins the area, and it's one of Arizona's many protected game refuges, so there's no hunting near the house. We entered the house with what I thought was reasonable quiet, but I hadn't seen quiet at all, as it turned out. The backyard, overlooked by a big window in the livingroom, is floodlighted. There two tripods are set up, with reflectors, with cameras aimed at the small drinking pond and feed placed for the animals at the foot of a

palo verde tree. When he first started photographing the animals, Stoody removed a center pane of glass in the window, and placed the camera there. I expect the pane will stay out, cold weather or not, from now on. For cords to cameras and flash bulbs, now set up in the yard, extend into the living room through this opening, and are operated from inside the house. The window is a center-rowfront for the audience.

We pulled up three chairs, turned out the house lights, and sat down to watch.

"It's just like catfishing on the Wabash in Indiana," Stoody explained. "You're fishing, and you throw out the bait and wait. Only difference, your camera is your tackle. You may sit here three hours and not see anything. Or we may be lucky."

We were lucky.

We sat very still. We lighted our cigarettes with an almost crafty secrecy-but kept the evaporative cooling system operating! Its steady hum drowned out the few sounds we made, and the animals have become accustomed to its noise, as well as to the lighted yard.

During the next three hours I saw more wild life less than 40 feet from where I was sitting than I've seen in all my years in Southern Arizona put together.

First to arrive were the skunks. They came after pieces of meat ("bait," he calls this, as well as the alfalfa hay for deer, the chicken feed for quail and other birds).

Now my reaction to skunks has always been pretty automatic. This has prevented me from making a close observation of these pretty animals, much less developing a real friendship. By the time I watched three different varieties of skunks for a little while, I wanted one for a pet. The spotted, or "hydrophobia" skunk, failed to arrive. Stoody has never seen one. But there was a large striped skunk with lots of white on its tail and body, with two wide stripes of white on his back, nearly two feet long. And there was a clearly recognizable "Arizona hog-nosed" skunk, and the northern hooded skunk.

They came singly, warily, daintily, with their waddling movement slightly reminiscent of a raccoon's gait. As he discovered a piece of meat, a skunk greedily clutched it in his forepaws and started to work. Sometimes a sudden noise in the surrounding darkness startled him. Then he would stand up like a kitten, forepaws in the air, as if ready to box with an opponent. Doubtless this is pure fancy on my part. Everyone knows a skunk doesn't have to take boxing lessons in order to learn self-defense.

One skunk was still enjoying a tasty morsel when a beautiful fox appeared. The fox circled wide about the area before he approached the food department directly beneath the tree, towards which the cameras are aimed. But the skunk stood his ground and leisurely finished his dinner. The fox left him strictly alone, thus proving the legends about how smart foxes are.

Our caller was an Arizona gray fox, not the little desert or kit fox. He travels only at night, and is rarely seen in the daytime, and therefore has been photographed rarely. He has long ears, and a truly beautiful, well-furred brush. His gray-to-black coloring shades into colorful reddish-yellow about his neck and behind his ears, which are long and fine. He's well over three feet long from the tip of his nose to the end of his handsome brush. According to the nature books, the gray fox likes birds, rodents, some vegetable material. I can add, from personal observation,