Riding my bike this morning up Camino Degrazia to where I live, I came upon five big crows hopping around in the road ahead of me; they were so focused on a big lizard that they seemed oblivious to my coming close. A Federal Express truck had stopped a few yards up the street for a delivery, and the crows were ignoring that as well. One of the crows was the aggressor. It picked the lizard up by its tail. The poor, frightened creature, opening its mouth snake-like and jerking back over and over toward its tormentor, was trying its best to defend itself. The several crow accomplices hopped alternately in closer and then back again out of range of the writhing lizard. It was a primitive dance as old as the world.

I felt as if I were watching something on the Nature Channel. The old school-teacher-impulse to help the underdog (underlizard?) surged in me, but I quickly decided that I had no business taking sides in a natural conflict that I didn’t understand. Obviously, birds eat lizards and worms and who-knows-what-else; but I imagine lizards eat bugs, something my young naturalist friend Nicholas Fudge would know all about. I remembered seeing a hawk once swoop down and catch a snake on the bluff by the Marina Costco, and I hadn’t felt any sympathy for the snake. To this day I regret that I didn't have a camera with me when the hawk caught the snake. This time I got off my bike as quickly as I could and dug my camera out of a bag. Before I could aim at the lizard and the crows, the FED EX truck headed toward us. I’m sure the driver didn’t see the lizard. The crows flew up into a tree. I wanted to yell, “Watch out for the lizard,” but that would have made no sense, and the driver would have thought I was crazy because he could see only a road full of crows. The right wheels of the truck rolled smack over the lizard. I stood stunned. The crows came back, picked up the smashed bits of lizard, and flew away. I hadn’t fired a shot with my camera.

As I rode on toward home, I remembered a couple of big pictures I had seen a couple of days ago in Balboa Park on the back wall of the Museum of Natural History. One of them was of a big Galapagos Island lizard and the other was of a dinosaur... so I headed back there to get my photo... a picture of a picture, which almost violates one of my rules about the picture-for-the-day monkey on my back... but there you have my way of seeing things sometimes: rules can be broken. Also, my mind wouldn’t hold itself back from recalling pictures about the war in the Middle East I saw just this morning, and I found myself thinking about crows and lizards and dinosaurs and humans who torment each other on their way to extinction... And that set me thinking about the terrible dilemma for President Obama as he decides whether to stay the course and stick with the plan of action he indorsed in his campaign or to break his word and get the hell out.