The Wild Life of Wildlife

A number of type-A city people have asked, since I moved to rural New Mexico, well, just what do you do out there?

While I am writing, both creatively and finishing an 80-page report for a client, and painting, and fixing and cleaning and watering and mowing and watering some more, and exploring (and getting lost), a fair amount of time and mental energy has centered on critter encounters. 

Since arriving in New Mexico, I have met:

• black widow spiders in the garage, relocated courtesy of NMSU; 

Coyote at dusk

• coyotes eyeing me at dusk who finally decided I was too big to be prey (I stood up very straight), but did try to lure away my dog Rita; 

• snorting javelinas charging by after the dogs while I was out for a run; 

• bats circling above my bed at 3am that I proceeded to catch in a fishing net and escort outside, leading to a massive caulking event of any and all cracks inside the house;

The Rattlesnake

• an irate skunk that sprayed my dog Lucky (Lucky got a bath with baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and hand soap that largely removed the  stunning odor); 

• a 5- or 6- foot rattlesnake that was more than a little irritated when I turned on the water faucet right next to him to water some trees -- we were both surprised by the other's appearance; I had to hose him down to get him to move away from the faucet so I could turn the water off; 

Tarantula

• crickets that like to nestle in the skylight so that their shrill voices will echo and carry even farther; alarmingly speedy house spiders; two varieties of roaches; innumerable flies; lumbering mosquitoes laden down with my blood; and, 

• a tarantula out for a sunset stroll.  

I moved to 106 desert acres. This crowd of critters is standard fare for this part of New Mexico. In the lively world out there, it's not all nose-twitching bunnies and hopping toads, although plenty of those frolic through the sand too.

***
By far the most dangerous predator on my land, however, is me.  

Armed with eco-friendly peppermint bug spray, flyswatters, fishing nets, a loud yell, and (unused) baseball bats, I am somewhat more imposing to the animal kingdom than my small stature might otherwise suggest to humans.

More to the point, however, as caretaker of the property, I also have access to the three guns that come with the land. With that, suddenly the humans are wary too.

With a rattlesnake or black widow bite, you have a couple of hours where, if you seek treatment, you'll likely be fine. Bats are freaky swooping overhead, but not lethal. Tarantulas can kill mice, but not people.

A shotgun blast can kill a person from across the room in a matter of seconds with one pull of a trigger finger (that gun balanced in the clasp of an evolutionarily-advanced opposable thumb).

Animals do kill their own kind, often to remove competition for a mate or resources for food. Chimpanzees, for instance, murder to expand territory. It's not sunshine and rainbows in the animal kingdom with everyone holding paws and singing in 5-part harmony.

But Homo sapiens take killing to a whole new level. Combining their big brains and big guns, unmitigated rage or righteousness or misfiring neurochemistry or greed or panic or pathological hatred or some combinations thereof, we can and do destroy to a terrifyingly extreme degree.

***
I saw that impressive rattlesnake again yesterday, slithering near the old compost bin by the other house where I suspect he lives.  

I still scan the ceiling for bats if I wake up abruptly in the middle of the night. After five non-violent bat removals, I'm still a little jumpy, even though, yes, I know, they are harmless except for the tiny percentage that is rabid.

My arachnophobia, however, appears to be fading. Now when I go in the garage, while I look for the tell-tale sturdy webs of black widows, and check before putting my hand anywhere where I can't see all of the area, from garage handles to boxes, I don't think much about my eight-legged friends. 

When I saw the tarantula outside that a month ago would have made me shriek, I only paused to observe.  When it didn't move in any aggressive way, I opted to take its picture and move on.

My first thought: I'm bigger; I could take him out if I had to.

Living in the rural southwest, I am up closer against my own survival instinct, and the level of ruthlessness I can live with in acting on that. 

***
The last bat I relocated, found clinging to a window screen, clearly exhausted, just wanted to be outside again.  I removed the screen, carried it away from the house and shook him out, with stern words for him to tell his buddies to stay outside. I am territorial. Just ask the roaches (now absent from the kitchen).  

That first meeting with the rattlesnake sent my heart rate up, and left me babbling at "Mr. Snakey." Now I am more likely to wear shoes sturdier than flip-flops now when walking the land, but through that exchange, I also realized he mostly just wanted to be left alone. His rattle made a lot of big noise to say, "back off!"

Living on my own, I don't have nearly as much luxury for dissolving into complete hysterics (although friends who have listened to me rant on the phone about bats and snakes may feel otherwise). In the moment, however, with a flapping bat or rattling snake, I best figure out a way right-quick way to manage critter relationships myself. The water hose worked fine with the rattler.  

Kind neighbors have helped when, for instance, I got the tractor stuck in the sand. I joined the search when one of their dogs went on walkabout. We have community, but largely, independence is the way here on the ranch. Each individual finds different balances between survival and cruelty, risk and security, paranoia and foolhardy obliviousness.   

If his Snakiness makes still another appearance, I could call the neighbor that shoots snakes, but more likely, I'd call the other neighbor that relocates them instead, or most likely, I'll do as I did yesterday and simply steer clear and let him slither on his way.  We have a lot of space here to share. 

***

I've killed a lot of crickets, mosquitoes, house spiders, roaches, gnats, flies, ticks, and a few odd unspecified creepy transparent multi-legged insect of unknown variety. Swatting and swearing, I've lectured the cats on their pathetic hunting expertise. 

The cats yawn and purr, roll over in the sun, dreaming of delicately chewing the heads off of mice and grounding swooping swallows.  

A lot of people have asked me, aren't you scared out there?  And the answer is yes, sometimes I am.  

And sometimes I'm exhilarated by the quiet and the beauty of the land, grateful for the opportunity I have to see clouds roll across the sky for the monsoon season.  

I do know where the ammunition is stored if one day I find a rattlesnake curled up in the Laz-Z-Boy in my living room.   

For good reason though, I am most scared of the violence of my own species.

Petting Lucky at the ranch shortly before rain rolled through
Photo credit: John W. Hicks

La Mesa Living

My new home

I'm a week into my new life in La Mesa, New Mexico, and loving it.

As with any relationship, building a true understanding of the 106 acres of the property will take time.

I've run the perimeter in the cooler morning air, wandered the lane of pecan trees, explored the shrinking lake, and followed the path poetically named Lovers Lane from my adobe house to the older white house on the property, but I still sometimes get turned around.

The Organ and Franklin mountains provide some guidance, but with the fire burning in the Gila National Forest, sometime the smoke shrouds them from view.  On the day I was up on the roof helping the owner fix the swamp cooler and repair some stucco cracks, we could smell the acrid odor of the fire despite its distance-- the largest fire in New Mexico history is busy rearranging the terrain according to her new rules.

Hummingbirds

Although I've heard tale of the rattlesnakes and javelinas on the property, and seen the water bowl the javelinas opted to toss over one evening, I've yet to those local residents. But the hummingbirds, swallows, doves, quail, starlings, bats, lizards, crickets, mellow bees, less mellow wasps, and spiders galore have all made appearances.

One of the black widows.
 Sure, she doesn't look
like much in a specimen
container.

On Tuesday, the curator of the NMSU Arthropod Collection stopped by and removed two black widow spiders from the garage (one a big, strapping girl), along with a few other spiders. The black widows will now begin their life of fame as they tour through in classrooms -- and I will be less jumpy in the garage eyeing every black dot I see.

Rita!

Rita and Lucky, the ranch dogs, serve as wagging guides across the terrain and happily, have yet to find the bird (a sandpiper, perhaps?) nesting on the front lawn. Turtles have wandered up to the back door, and so I give them a bit of a bath with the hose -- it's a tough drought in New Mexico, and even sturdy desert animals are beginning to feel it.

Lucky

I am just beginning to ease into my role as caretaker of the land, flora and fauna. Watering the pecan, mulberry and plum trees, playing with the sprinklers and tending to the lilies and pots of roses and sedum, refilling the hummingbird feeders and the water tub for the bees, keeping an eye peeled for thirsty turtles and, of course, giving dinner to the pups and my aged, well-traveled, purring felines -- all of this provides a level of peace and purpose sorely lacking in my cubicle dwelling days in Takoma Park, no matter how green the running path by Sligo Creek.

The homesteader farmer in me thrills with my new knowledge on how to drive the Kubota tractor to mow the tall weeds by the hacienda. And the remaining urbanite in me rejoices in the speedy Internet that will continue to allow me to work as a writer and connect out in the world.

Yucca

I packed up my home and life in the Washington, DC area with the idea of changing my life. And while I fully understand that the external doesn't change the internal (the world, however different looking, is still filtered through my skewed subjective view), I do feel as if all the newness and change has woken up my senses, given my eyes and ears and nose and hands something new to feast upon.

My photography already reflects new light and obviously new subjects. My, as yet, brief attempts at painting here have suggested that I best learn to paint faster; 2% humidity dries acrylics up mightily fast, no matter how much medium I stir in. I expect deeper changes in my art and writing to seep in more gradually as I settle into my new home and explore the surrounding areas.

I'm not clear how my New Mexico love affair will develop; as with all love affairs, there are no guarantees. I do know that on this sunny Thursday, I'm enjoying the rush and blush of infatuation and drinking in the joy.

Touching Spiders

Today, I touched a spider. On purpose.

Specifically, I touched this spider:

Captain Daddy Long-Legs

He was a big Daddy, maybe 2-inches across with his impressive legs, lolling there on a sunny concrete ledge.

The reason I touched the spider is, in part, because of the ending of hysterical blog post over on Hyperbole and a Half.  Go ahead and read it right now.  I'll wait. 

[singing, humming, filing nails]

All done?  Great. 

So now you know that about the scariest thing she could think of to do was to touch a spider.

Solidarity, sister, I say.

Spiders have scared the snickers out of me since I was a little kid.  My mother spent a lot of time removing them from one corner of my room where they tended to lurk.  I took their presence personally, figuring that they knew they made me quiver, and so picked on me. Like dogs, they could sense my fear, and hunted me down. 

Bad Memory #1: After using a plastic bathroom cup to rinse my mouth out after brushing my teeth, I spit the foam out in the sink, and then saw a very large, hairy, wet, and downright angry looking spider trying to crawl back out of the sink. 

I still don't know if he got the dental swirl, but let's just say, I never used that cup again.  To this day, I cup my hands together to rinse my mouth when brushing my teeth.  There is no big cup in which big spiders may lounge about in in my bathroom.

Bad Memory #2: As a teenager, I remember waking up standing next to my light switch at the door to my room, the room ablaze, trying to piece together just how I got there.  Then it came to me, the image of spiders half a foot in diameter dangling down from the ceiling, webbing their way toward me. 

The only way I could talk myself back into sleeping was by realizing that, without my contact lenses, I couldn't see a spider that size that far away. 

I didn't find that comforting, since that didn't mean that gigantic spiders weren't up there, just that I couldn't see them.  I slept stifling myself with a spider-guard sheet tucked around my head.

Spiders, no matter how good they may be for your garden and removing other pests, freaked me out.  As a grownup, they still send me galloping off and announcing their presence in a high pitched voice when I encounter one. Spider! Spider! Spider!  That's usually followed by swatting at them with a shoe. 

However today, having just read about spiders and fear and invincibility, when I saw that big spider that appeared to be dead and possibly permanently affixed to the cement, well, I had to stop to take a picture at least. 

The first step to dealing with fear is to examine it closely. 

On observation, I noted that the radioactive mutant spider had 7 legs.  That meant that bad boy had a run in with something and lost a leg. 

Another uncomfortable childhood memory involves 2nd grade boys pulling the legs off daddy long legs until they could only push themselves around with one leg.  Then they pulled that last leg off and left the legless immobile body shaking there.

That's about when I realized human cruelty is real and arbitrary and starts very young. 

And I don't even like spiders.  But I digress.

Back to Big Daddy and his photo opportunity.  I took his picture and then figured, oh, what the heck.  Touch the spider. He's not even alive, so he's not, for instance, going to skitter up my arm and spit venom in my eye.

I tapped one leg.

And Big Daddy scampered right off on his lucky seven legs, not at all dead.

I scampered way off in the other direction down the path, totally grossed out and quietly thrilled. 

I touched a spider today.  On purpose.