It apparently has to with the fixed distances between points.
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Cochise the German Shepherd puppy I’m watching for a few hours. Tired him out with playing earlier.
Lovely feathers of a BlueJay that was the prey for something else.
A skink of some sort.
Tropical orbweaver most likely.
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Count the number of scales around the neck. That’s how to confidently tell them apart.
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I think it’s most likely the common five lined skink. A juvenile.
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Here we have three species that have the scales as the only external difference.
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In my county there are just a few skinks reported.
5 lines.
3 limes.
Brown.
Mole.
Broad headed.
Maybe one or two others. But the ones it seems to best fit is the 5 lined skink juvenile.
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It almost looks real! But very cool.
I had a very nonChristian week with insects. I discovered the hard way there was a ground nest of yellow jackets right where I was picking off dead foliage. Apparently no one loves yellow jackets though they do eat mosquitoes. So I bought a foaming spray and gave it a go one morning before dawn. Didn’t see any more of them that morning but when I went to dig it up they drove me off. So I repeated a dawn raid again the next morning. Waited a day and then went to dig it up and this time only a few emerged. So I kept the spray handy and dug it up, all four layers. Looking at the young forming in its cells I did feel a little bad. But still glad to be rid of them.
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The spider is real.
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Thought I had another plant enthusiast but I see the green hopper. Critters are cool but I find it easier to have botanical collection in my garden than a zoo in my backyard.
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I figured out decades ago that liquid dish detergent and water in a cheap spritz bottle with an adjustable spray does a good job of smothering wasps. It knocks them down to crawling and dead in short order. In your case, I would have used a bucket! 
The spritzer is great for paper wasps where you don’t want them, and no nasty poisons.
I was pretty intimidated by how fast they are and they got me on a heel, on a wrist and under my chin. I guess I’ve just been lucky up to now. I got the foaming spray because it was supposed to expand in race up into the nest.
I’ve gotten wasps building paper nests up under overhangs but haven’t had any trouble with them.
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The paper wasps like the ceiling of our front entryway. There could be two or three of them if I didn’t take them down.
Years ago my wife got a sting from one – the nest was less than two feet above grade on the underside of a stiff leaf! She’s also allergic (like anaphylactic allergic!) to bumble bee venom, of all things! (That sting predated the wasp sting which thankfully was just typical.) A couple of benadryl caps and a really quick(!) trip to the clinic where they put her on a benadryl IV. She got pretty sleepy, but at least she could breath! We kept an epi-pen around for several years after that, but now her risk of a sting is essentially nonexistent.
Oh, what we call yellow jackets nest in the ground – that’s why I mentioned the bucket. Or did you mean up into the underground nest?
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Yes, in the ground. From watching YouTube vids it seemed that water and soap will not be effective but I didn’t try it. Apparently they always start with a mouse or larger animals burrow and go from there. Apparently the pros use shop vacs to suck up most of them then dig it up and feed those not hatched yet to their chickens. Others recommend a powder placed in such a way that each incoming will land in it and bring it deeper into the nest, but I don’t think we have access to that California. Oh and my wife’s sister has had very bad effects from bee sting and carries an shot with her everywhere. As a result my wife is very concerned about stings too.
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A bucket was just an extemporaneous thought. Soapy water would likely be absorbed too quickly in the soil, too.
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I celebrate them.