Desert Critters: July 12, 2010

Life here in the desert is not all about snakes although two of my recent posts may have suggested that.


In a previous post I mentioned our Dove Family raising no less than three new families each summer in a big Mesquite tree in our backyard oasis.  

Baby Doves in Mesquite Tree

Our cat, Ayla, spends much of every summer day sitting on the front window sill (indoors) playing with a collared lizard who lives on the other side of the glass (outdoors). I honestly believe he is well aware that she cannot get him and he spends his days on that windowsill looking in teasing and taunting her. I know this because I can see the gleam in his eyes and the smirk on his face. :-D

  

For the past three days I have been assailed by a horrible smell coming from my freshly cleaned and painted laundry room. What could this mysterious odor be? This room, although it shares a roof with the house and carport is its own separate space, not connected to the house other than by the roof.  When I am working out there or doing laundry I leave the door propped open, always being careful to close it when I am done.
Today I carefully searched for the source of this smell and found this fellow - a petrified toad - laying motionless and quite dead in a back corner of the room. I swept him up and rather unceremoniously dumped him in our desert front yard. I doubt that either the resident Turkey vultures or the crows will eat him but I am quite certain the army of big black ants will make very good use out of his lifeless form.

These toads, known around here as Colorado River toads,  spend their summers in the desert eating zillions of bugs. They release a toxin through their skin which protects them from would-be predators which means we have to hope our dogs never try to catch one as this toxin can be lethal. When the toads are deprived of water in which to spend part of each day soaking and drinking they shrivel up and die. This is what happened to this poor unfortunate granddaddy toad who inadvertently got caught in my laundry room and thus met his demise.


The Sonoran Desert in summer may be hotter than !@#$%^ but it is never boring.  


Lindy

July 10, 2010 and 110 Degrees - in the shade

This afternoon in the garden I found this lovely little king snake. You can see her eyes in this pic. S/he is about 3' long and was, at the time, taking refuge from the heat under the shade of Big Mama Rosy. Big Mama is my largest Rosemary bush and she is definitely spreading outward as she ages. She is about 5' tall and a good 10' across.

While photographing Ms. King Snake I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned I was delighted to see this visitor . . .

Mr. Roadrunner is perched on the fence under the shade of a very large Mesquite tree in our "backyard". This yard area is a fenced in portion of our 5 acres of Sonoran Desert. We provide plenty of fresh water, shade, shrubs and two large Mesquite trees for the wildlife. Our dogs use this area as well but do not seem to ever bother the wildlife. Every summer this oasis in the desert is home to snakes, roadrunners, many smaller birds, hummers, collared lizards, bees, and of course, the ubiquitous rabbits. We have a dove family that provides us with no less than three full sets of babies every summer. We are currently watching the first set learn to fly while Mama Dove is redecorating their tiny, flimsy, and most precarious nest for the arrival of set #2.  As it turned out, Mr. Roadrunner has a mate who showed up a few minutes after I took this picture. When I tried to get a pic. of the two of them together (I was inside the house but they saw movement) they became agitated and one of them took off.  If you look closely you can see the Mesquite pods hanging from the tree. 

Buzz Worm aka Rattlesnake

Today's post has nothing to do with herbs nor does it have anything to do with dreams. If anything, this is more the stuff of nightmares.

While I was out back hanging a load of laundry in the warm Sonoran Desert sun our dogs were out and about inspecting the yard as they often do. Suddenly I heard "The Noise", the one we desert dwellers become accustomed to listening for as it signals danger. I dropped the laundry and ran screaming toward the dogs. One of them had her nose almost touching the 2.5 foot rattler. The other one was moving ever closer. I was screaming at them to get away and finally managed to get both overly curious dogs into the house with no bites.  We have spent hundreds of dollars on our dogs sending them to rattlesnake school to teach them to stay away from this danger.  We take them to our vet. every spring for a "rattlesnake" shot to help ward off the most serious effects of a bite should the worst happen. Unfortunately the vaccine does no good against the bite of a Mohave. Also unfortunately, the schooling did no good either since both dogs had more curiosity than either fear or sense.

What to do? I couldn't just leave it in the yard. It might leave the fenced in portion of our 5 acres and crawl back into the open desert.  However, on the other hand, it might find a cool and shady niche somewhere inside the fence and none of us would have any idea where it was hiding. I had no choice, I had to kill it. Wielding a large square shovel, a heavy brick and more guts than I thought I had I managed to kill the snake. It took a long time to die; just like a chicken with its head cut off the thing wriggled and squirmed for what seemed like forever but probably didn't take more than 5 minutes. I shook far longer than that after it was over.

Judging from the tail I think this fellow might be a Mohave, considered to be the most toxic rattlesnake in the US there is no known anti-toxin for a bite from a Mohave. Unfortunately we happen to have quite a few here in the western part of the Sonoran Desert.

Needless to say, I can hardly wait to get back to northern Michigan. There are timber rattlers (eastern diamondbacks) in far southern Michigan but no poisonous snakes of any kind Up North, at least not yet.   Global warming might change all that but for now . . . 

Lindy

Another Big Day

 Friday, May 21, 2010

Today is my retirement day from teaching elementary education in a public school. My brother flew out from MI (to AZ) to celebrate. Saturday my husband, brother and I went to Prescott. The first thing we did was visit a wonderful jewelry store. Mike said he wanted to buy his wife a piece of jewelry and he wanted my opinion. We decided on a beautiful little pendant - a Zuni bear (about 3/8" diameter)with amethyst and turquoise stones inset into a solid silver base. The back of the pendant is finished with the arrow to the heart symbol. The pendant can be worn on either side. The little bear hangs from a slender sterling silver chain. I was confident my sister-in-law would love her new piece of jewelry.  My husband then took us to one of my favorite places for dinner - Prescott Brewery where we all stuffed ourselves on their terrific Spinach Enchiladas and microbrews.

After arriving home Mike called his wife, Dianna, and immediately after the phone call told me to sit down and wait for him. He went into the guest room and emerged with the lovely gift bag the pendant was packaged in. The Zuni bear was for me. I could not have been more surprised. What a wonderful retirement gift to be cherished always. 

Flowers from some of the staff and students:

Doe and Her New Fawn

Connie Kroll, realtor extraordinare, new friend:) and neighbor (about 4.5 miles down the road apiece), sent this picture. The Whitetail doe and her newborn fawn were in the Kroll's backyard. Connie was fortunate enough to be at home and able to get this great picture. We are fortunate to be one of the recipients of this wonderful photo.


Always curious about cameras people use I asked Connie:


Canon Rebel T2l 550 with a built in video camera, wide angle lens which Connie calls her "reach out and touch someone" lens, and many other goodies. 

Friday, May 7, 2010

Today, May 7, 2010, is a big day.

We are the happy new owners of Lot #2

44°45' 05.12"N; 85°53' 32.26"W

How cool is this? Although we do not have a street address we do know where we are on the planet. 

The property in northern Michigan that we have been looking at for over two years and finally decided to buy is now officially ours. Closing took place at approximately 8:00 a.m. on Friday, May 7, 2010 in the office of Crossroads Title, Traverse City, MI. We did our part electronically from AZ. In 5 - 6 weeks when the state of Michigan has registered the land in our names (takes states awhile to do their paperwork) the deed will be sent to us and will go into our safety deposit box.  


Our land is 5 acres, partially wooded on the north side with open country views to the south, east, and west. This land as well as the land all around us is dotted with many varieties of both hardwood and coniferous trees as it rolls gently in all directions. The views in the fall will be magnificent. We have one other neighbor (Lot #1) on our 1/4 mile private road, Clara Lane, and one neighbor adjacent to our property on the south (not on Clara Lane) - a small farm with 2 horses who come to the fence to visit. We will have to learn their names and lay in a supply of carrots for them. The property is about 17 miles west of Traverse City and just a couple of miles south of Hwy 72, the Leelanau/Benzie County line. We are on the Benzie County side of that line. 

Part of our woods - bare trees on north - coniferous on east

View: Northeast corner of our land

The plan is to have our contractor, Matt Kroll of Kroll Contracting, build a pole barn in the fall. This structure will be about 40'X40' and will eventually be my husband, Doug's, work space for his business, BarnesAero. In the meantime it will be our work space for the tools we need to build our own house. It will also house a small trailer which we will attempt to live in with our 2 dogs and 2 cats while we build our house.  Matt will (future date to be determined) put up the shell for our house and garage, close it in, and provide some help with the inside. We plan on doing most of the finish work ourselves.

Matt Kroll and Doug staked out the pole barn

We are designing our house - a bilevel octagon with a relatively small footprint - 948 sq. ft. on the main level, same on the lower level and an entrance large enough for a coat closet and stairs; the entrance will connect between the garage and the house.


After the pole barn is complete Doug will take a load of our belongings (stuff we need to keep but can do without for a few months) from AZ to Michigan in a UHaul and fly back to AZ.  Of course, the house here in AZ does have to sell and we cannot put a time frame on that. Doug plans to remain at his current job until on or about Feb. 1, 2011. In the meantime I will retire from teaching school here in AZ on May 21, 2010. We will then spend the ensuing months doing a "fix-up, clean-up, paint" job both inside and out on our AZ house in preparation to sell it.

Looking west - pole barn will be in the center of this picture. Our only other neighbor on Clara Lane can be seen in the center toward the back.

It was March when these pictures were taken. The land and the hardwoods were bare having recently lost their winter blanket of snow. We are anxious to begin now that we own the land but we must wait and be patient. There is so much yet to do here in AZ before we can make the move.  We have many plans for this property: a small fruit orchard, gardens, a few chickens,  a windmill to help provide electricity, a greenhouse attached to the house, a potting shed and . . . the list goes on. 

Spring in the Desert

Spring has arrived here in the Sonoran Desert with cool nights and warm, windy afternoons. Many of my herbs are flowering beautifully. Unfortunately, until I locate another suitable place in our yard for a garden I have to plant in pots as our Beagle mix, Molly, digs everything up. 

                  There are a couple of different kinds of lettuces plus radishes in this pot.


This little guy (below) spends his nights perched in a Mesquite right outside our bedroom patio door. Because the days are warm we like to keep this door open at night to let in the cool evening air. However, being a Mocking bird, he begins his repertoire about 10:00 p.m. every night and sings all night long. This wakes us up and we have to shut the door to sleep. I do hope he finds his mate soon and moves on to a location just a little way from our bedroom but still in the vicinity of our property. When we are up and about he is an absolute delight to watch and listen to.

My first and only (until now) post talked about my Dream Pillows. For the moment those are on the back burner to simmer for a bit longer. With school still in session and grades, report cards, standardized tests, and closing in on the end of the school year I have been a bit overwhelmed.