Thursday Thoughts – Desert Inhabitants

Life in the desert – we all know there is life, but for me it was rather a shock to see how Much life.

Human beings might turn up – like in the header – but seldom without camels.

If you walk the dunes of the Sahara Desert an early morning, waiting for the sunrise, there are other creatures catching your attention…

…like this super fast moving gerbil, or desert rat. Puffs of sand coming up of this hole made me curious…

I waited for him to show himself properly…but swooosh, and he was up and back in his hole in less than a milli – second, digging along again. At least I got a glimpse of his fascinatingly big eyes!

After the sunrise, we walked over the dunes towards the camp. The grey light had shifted into pink, and was now turning more and more into a warm yellow. But who is making these patterns then? And, looking at the tiny footprints, there must be a multitude of these creatures…

And here he is – a scarab beetle scuttling the big sand waves. I guess a cousin to those scarabs highly revered in old Egypt. In the shadow of a dune I found this little one digging along.

We rode camels to the dunes and watched the sunset from one of them. A beautiful experience – beyond words. One of the Berber men told us we had been followed by a desert fox – I was sorry he did not tell us when the fox was still there.

Lastly – a picture of the scarab footprints…and something else…Who made these tunnels under the sand? I hope someone out there in the blogosphere has the answer!