Mohave and Blacktailed Rattlesnakes

OK, here are some more rattlesnake pictures. We've seen a lot of them this summer, I assume because the rains have bred lots of mice and lizards for them to feed on.

Anyway, this first picture is probably the most interesting. My wife discovered this three foot long snake about dusk on the concrete slab in one of the rooms of her parents' partially completed home (they are also building down here). I lifted it up with a stick and dropped it into a plastic barrel (with lid), then drove about a mile away to release it. It had markings I hadn't seen before, so I took some pictures of it as I released it and then looked it up on the internet when I got home. It turns out that having white bands that much wider than the black bands on its tail identify it as a Mojave Rattlesnake, supposedly the most dangerous rattlesnake in The United States. Most rattlesnake venoms cause tissue degeneration, but the venom from a Mojave Rattlesnake is a neuro-toxin. It causes brain and spinal cord damage, and victims often die of suffocation if not treated soon.

And yes ... this area turns out to be part of the normal territory of the Mojave Rattlesnake.

And this picture shows another Blacktailed Rattlesnake, which seems to be the most common variety in our neighborhood. They are fairly passive and actually quite pretty, but this particular snake was the largest Blacktailed Rattlesnake we've seen and it was only fifteen feet outside the dining room window of our new house. I estimated it to be four feet long. Again, I loaded it into the barrel and relocated it a couple hundred yards away, taking some pictures of it as it crawled up onto a rock.

Green Hillside

The summer monsoon rains have really made the hillside green this year. I haven't seen it this lush in quite a while. Here is a picture of our paritally completed house from the road further down the hill. I'm afraid it may look this way for a while, since it probably won't get stucco'd until we get enough things finished on the inside for us to be able to move in. The house is watertight as it is right now, but I won't rest easy until the stucco is on.



This is Thompson Peak. It is almost directly above our house to the west, although this picture was taken from several hundred yards south of our lot. It is really pretty to hike in the ravines and along these ridges, especially after all the rain we've had.

Sunflower Yucca

Who said plants can't grow well in dry, alkalai soil. Take a look at this huge sunflower that
grew on our lot. We're going to submit it to the Guinness Book of World Records.

OK, not really. This is the underside of a dead yucca plant (Spanish Bayonet, I think) that
Alice found while helping Eric clean up dead brush on the lot. Sure looks like a sunflower,
though, doesn't it?

Cluster of Bees

My wife discovered this cluster of bees on the side of the large ravine that runs across our property. The dirt wall was vertical and the cluster was about 14 inches long from top to bottom. The bees are stacked one on top of another to a thickness of about three inches.

The bees were very passive with only a few of them flying around, but the ones on the outside were moving slightly. I thought possibly they were trying to keep a queen warm or something, except that it wasn't a particularly chilly day. They were gone the next day and left no trace that they had been there.

Harley-Davidson Club

My sister and her husband belong to a Harley-Davidson club in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their local dealer arranged a trip to Phoenix where he transported the bikes while the club members came out by plane. The weather north of Phoenix was wet and cold, so several of them decided to come down here and see our little building project.

It was great to see my sister and her husband, and the rest of her gang were awfully nice folks as well. A couple of them thought we were crazy to tackle this house by ourselves, but then we weren't the ones riding through cowboy country all dressed up in black leather pajamas.