The Rattlesnake Garage and Other Tales

 

by Pa Rock

Respecter of Nature

Having lived in Arizona for several years I became familiar with various aspects of the unique wildlife of that state and area.  Some of it was on a personal level, such as the night I woke up being stung by a scorpion who was fighting with me for control of the bedsheet.  I also had a grackle (a type of desert crow) with whom I would share my breakfast sandwich each morning when I arrived at the military base where I worked.  Bob, the grackle, got to where he recognized my car as I drove onto the base and he would follow me to where I parked and then wait impatiently on the ground for me to begin sharing breakfast.

I collected second-hand critter tales, as well, like the one told to me by a friend regarding a javelina (wild pig) running past her and brushing up against her leg one evening as she was out for a stroll.  Another friend was out with her unleashed pet chihuahua going for a similar walk one evening  - that's when you walk in the Phoenix area, when it begins to cool off in the evenings or very early in the morning - and as this friend was walking a coyote ran up and grabbed the chihuahua in its jaws and ran off.  The coyote soon dropped the scared dog though, perhaps deciding that it was not in the mood for Mexican food after all.

There was also a small incorporated town out in the western stretches of Phoenix where gangs of wild chihuahuas roamed freely and authorities could not figure out a way to bring them under control.  (I always thought there might be a PIXAR movie somewhere in that scenario.)  Another time there was a story in the news about an older home whose walls were so full of bees that he house ultimately had to be torn down.

The desert may appear to some to be a bleak and dying landscape, but it is home to a great diversity of creatures and they all struggle daily to survive and thrive.

This week there was another Arizona wildlife story in the news, and it, too, occurred in the Phoenix area, or what the Arizona Chamber of Commerce refers to as "The Valley of the Sun."  A homeowner in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa called a snake removal service after he spotted a couple of diamondback rattlesnakes in his garage.  The owner suspected that he had three of the deadly creatures living in his garage, but when the professional "snake wrangler" arrived to remove them, she found that instead of three snakes, there were twenty:  five adults, including one which was pregnant, and fifteen babies.  The removal expert also found evidence (snakeskins) indicating that there had been as many as forty in the garage in the past.  Many of the ones she removed - with long metal tongs - were wrapped around the hot water heater which was operating out of the garage.

The lesson in all of those aforementioned cases is that nature does what it has to do in order to survive. As man encroaches, nature fights back - as long and as hard as it can.

This week I have an armadillo punching holes across my back yard here in the Ozarks, and the deer have been right up next to the house eating the late blooms off of the squash plants.  I wish them all a bountiful harvest and a warm and secure winter.  The same goes for the many groundhogs and multitudes of birds and squirrels with whom I temporarily co-exist.  There is room for all of us.