Howdy Herpers, 04/26/12
Every once in a while, I cut the herps on our beloved
plot a break, and wander off elsewhere. As far as I can tell, they don't seem
to miss me much.
From 30 March
through 1 April, Herrmann the German and I joined Dale DeNardo, Marty Feldner
and John Slone. Our mission was to seek a special form of speckled rattlesnake,
the "Dwarf Mitch," AKA the "White Mitch." We met out in a
mountain range that carries a strange name. They are called the "Nunya
Bizness Mountains," which are located somewhere north of the south pole.
But it might be easier to get to them by traveling south from the north pole.
As this was a first time visit to the Nunya Biznesses for
Dale, Herrmann the German, and me, we had the privilege of listening to tales
from Sloner and Marty of the great abundance of our quarry in the days of yore.
As near as I can figure out from their discussion, at one point it was possible
to walk across their backs without ever having ones' feet touch the ground.
It's always cool to hear about the good old days from
people who are over 20 years younger.
For their stories seemed indeed to be the good old days.
For the time period we were out there, they were the crappy new days.
The bad news was that we only found one. The really bad
news is that Dale DeNardo found it, and was insufferable in the modesty that
followed this act.
(It's always better
to be lucky than good.)
But there us a silver lining in all this: we DID find
one. And thanks to marvelous Marty, we also scored a patch-nosed snake. That
was it for the Nunya Bizness portion of this trip. Five pairs of eyes grinding
on hillsides so steep that if one stands up straight, one's nose is hitting the
terrain. Two snakes to show for it.
There were other disappointments with this trip. I was
told that there were elephant trees here. Heretofore, I had always thought that
elephants entered this world by coming out of their mother's wombs. I had no
idea they grew in trees. And any tree that would produce elephant fruits had to
be really big. I even brought my chainsaw in hopes of doing some ivory
collecting, not to mention a ladder to get me up into the canopy.
Sadly, the elephant trees weren't even in bloom, let
alone carrying the fruit. We must have been there out of season.
But all jesting aside, it was a good trip, with good
people. We saw over 30 desert iguanas. We ate well, drank better, and had lots
of interesting and raucous discussions. I just wish I could remember them.
On 21 April, I joined Melissa Amarello for a look at the
cerberus dens under watch. I will go into further depth on this trip with the
next report. There is too much to share for one report from this fantastic area
for one report. And the end of my lunch hour looms large.
We go to pictures for the rest of this report:
Image 1: Dale's White Mitch, a female. Posed image.
Image 2: Marty's patch-nosed snake, in situ
Image 3: From cerberus country, a den called
"Caprock."
Image 4-6: This sequence shows the benefit of hands off
observations. Melissa named this snake Roger. But I'll bet she tells all the guys that
sort of thing. Anyway, Roger comes out of caprock, Roger settles in, Roger comes all the way out
of Caprock. He is poised to watch the comings
and goings of all the females in the roost.
Image 7: Roger coming back out of Caprock the following
morning.
Images 8 and 9: The short-horned lizards from this area
are fantastic! These images are two views of the same animal.
Again, we'll go into more depth of the cerberus trip with
the next report. For now, this here is Roger Repp, signing off from southern
Arizona, where the turtles are strong, the snakes are handsome, and the lizards
are all above average.