I take this Bonsai which I have coined the Weirdest Bonsai EVER and place it next to the pond behind my house for some pictures in the "beach" and here comes this real large bird native to Florida and stands next to the bonsai. When I pulled the pictures on my computer I noticed that the shape of the bird resembles the shape of the tree. Maybe, and I am just putting the theory out there, the tree thinks the bonsai is very stylish and just wants to be there. The eyes of this bird are beautiful; you know they are looking at you because those big yellow eyes just point at you when the bird turns its head perpendicular to you.

Aphids would normally be a reason not to buy a plant... but, in my case, I have to confess that they were one of the selling points for I was going to have a few hours of fun photographing this little bugs. I put the plant in the Walmart cart and paid for my infested dwarf pomegranate tree. Aphids are interesting little creatures who's excrement is called Honeydew; a precious elixir that incentives a collaborative effort without parallels by ants who care for and defend aphids close to their colony; and yes, in fact my tree came with ants as well. You can read a little more about aphid and ant collaboration from the Japanese Ant Database Group.

Every summer my wife and I are on constant alert in the evenings to save young oppossum from our three Jack Russell Terriers while they are outside. I'm afraid we are not always successfull!

In this instance we managed to save this cute little guy. The dogs had chased him up into one of my bonsai (a Dwarf Hinoki Cypress) which was safely sitting on a bench. When we heard them howling we scrambled out and it took a few minutes before we saw his face up in the tree. We picked him out of the tree and carried him over to the nearby woods.

Dale Cochoy
Wild Things Bonsai Studio

This lizard has been living on my bonsai trees for at least 3 months now. It and I (or my trees) have a truly symbiotic relationship; it is happy to be inside the screen of my porch where birds cannot get to it, and in exchange it eats all the little bugs that get through the screen and could potentially hurt my bonsai trees (not to mention its Zoolander style posing for the picture in this website). I wondered how much longer this honeymoon would last, and found that these creatures can live up to 4 to but have been known to live for 8 years in captivity (I'm hoping that I live longer than the lizard). As a point of reference, the longest mice live in captivity is around 4 years which is a big stretch from their lifespan measured in months when in the wild (read more about lifespan of animals from this article). The lizard is shown close to a black olive bonsai. It might not be a coincidence that both the tree and the lizard are natives of the Bahamas, hence the lizards affinity for this tree. And, according to Wikipedia, this "anole" is a she because of the light stripe on "her" back.