Critterlines

The month’s headlines from fur to feathers

Back in the neighborhood --Driving up Cottonwood to our house one evening close to dusk. We were startled and then thrilled to have a good-sized adult gray fox trot across the road in front of us. Gray foxes were common in this area – even this neighborhood – until a few years ago when they succumbed to an epidemic of rabies. We knew they were making a comeback because our neighbors had spotted them, because we had seen their scat and because Nutmeg the Nose alerted on their scents regularly. What a beautiful animal. What a welcome return.

It takes an expert who’s willing to stand still long enough! I had difficulty deciding what kind of snake I almost stepped on up on Cherry Creek Rd on the edge of the Gila Forest. I mean, who can identify something while simultaneously jumping 3 feet in the air and making loud screamy noises. By the time I hit the ground, started breathing and allowed my curiosity to take over, I’d scared the poor snake half-way up the hillside and onto the rocks. So my friend Gail and I studied it from a distance and then went to the internet. Gail’s herpe friend took her description and narrowed it down to a milk snake or a sonoran king, most probably the latter. He gave us high marks – seems I almost stepped on a rarity. Here are the usual suspects. Could you tell the difference? There’s a rhyme to help remember the safe versus the scary: "Red to yellow, kill a fellow; red to black, venom lack,"

Raising a family –A pair of ravens returned to their nest in our neighbors’ cottonwood tree. They successfully hatched and fledged 5 chicks. Key to their success was the deer carcass in the arroyo just down from their nest tree. Drawn by the deer remains, the sky was frequently full of turkey vultures desiring to do what vultures do. While one raven parent snatched gobbets of deer meat to take to the ever-hungry chicks, the other parent fended off the vultures. The raven a soaring, diving, turn-on-a-feather F22 to the vultures’ heavier less-maneuverable C-130. Eventually the vultures would leave – at least for the day. With the rising thermals the next morning, they were back to try again. Finally the raven chicks fledged. Our neighbors watched flight lessons and reported the chicks were unstable and uncoordinated, more like the Wright Bros than the Air Force. They have learned fast, and grown faster. There is now a ‘conspiracy of ravens’ in the neighborhood sitting the power poles and riding the currents while discussing the turn of human events below.

My deer, but you’re getting big Sitting on the patio reading, having the feeling of being watched, and looking up. She was standing right on the edge of the patio, not 5 feet away. Ears up and forward, nose twitching and sides moving. Wait – sides moving? To be perfectly honest, the foregoing is a bit of a composite picture. I was sitting on the patio and she was standing 5 feet away looking at me and she was very round of belly. But the time I saw her sides moving was a few days before when she was grazing outside the kitchen window. She is very preggers and will deliver very soon – twins, if she follows the typical pattern. For a flash, I empathized with her slow, awkward gait, remembering how it feels to walk for two!

Did the tooth fairy miss one? We were walking on our property when Nick bent over to pick up a long, white and weathered object from the dirt. Measuring about 4 inches, sheared at an angle at the large end and tapering to a point. Tooth? Bone? I always opt for the exotic first and settle for the commonplace second. Exotic: a javelina’s tusk. Not thick enough nor blunt enough. A cat’s incisor? Not unless the sabertooth has made a comeback. The commonplace: by comparing our find to a mature male deer antler scavenged from another trail, it turns out that this was left by a “spiker.” A spiker is a young buck that is old enough to grow an antler, but too young for the antler to make much of itself. You might kindly call this a “one-pointer.”

Puppy dog tails Nutmeg the Nose got snake trained. Not all dogs are snake averse. Some, like Nutmeg, lead with their nose not their caution. In MD she discovered a little racer in our backyard and kept poking her nose into its range even after it struck her 3 times. I finally had to rescue the snake! That isn’t good with a rattler. Spring training here includes Hector the milked, de-fanged rattler brought by the dog trainer to the local park. Turn the snake loose, put a shock collar on the dog and take the dog for a walk – right into snake range. See what the dog does. Let the dog get a whiff, get a look, hear the rattle and maybe even get a strike and then BAM! ZING! Yipes!! It turns out Nutmeg can tell the difference between the smell and sound of a little racer and a black-tail rattler named Hector. She paused. She sniffed. She shied away. But the trainer picked Hector up with a 12 foot hook stick, lifted him into range and at the same time shocked her good. I’m sorry – I know it sounds cruel. But 1: Nutmeg was on a shock collar on her invisible fence in MD so she knew what that shock meant when she felt it, and 2: a momentary shock is preferable to a rattlesnake bite anytime. Retest: give her a break and a bone, take off the collar and “go for a walk” again into snake range. This time, Nutmeg smelled, heard and ran the other way. Now when we’re out hiking, all we have to do is watch her; when she turns and runs, we turn and run.

So those are the headlines. June was a hot month and a dry one. Writer-dry, not a word moving on the page. Now it’s July, the heat’s broken, monsoon season is here and the air has freshened. Enough to dislodge a few random thoughts and observations. We’ll see what this month brings to story-land. Sonnie