The light of the moon on the desert causes subtle motion to become perceptible as the giant saguaros move in the wind along the ridge. It all happens with the light; what we see, what the human brain registers — what we call “reality”—is all light.
CHAPTER 16
One hundred five degrees Fahrenheit on this late June day but I see clouds, high thin cirrus clouds that give me hope; the level of humidity in the air is rising as moist air flows from the Gulf of California and the Sierra Madre.
Then two days of prayers and deer dances are offered by the Yoeme and the Tohono O’Odom people in honor of San Juan to call in the rain clouds. Today one hundred two degrees Fahrenheit. By afternoon a light rain falls.
Off come the leaves of the mesquites and palo verde, and my datura plants too. Down the hill a little whirlwind swirls in the chicken yard. In eight minutes or less it’s passed and then the second wave comes with big raindrops for two or three minutes and it’s over.
Sometimes in the rain or at sundown one may catch glimpses of ancient scenes of grandeur — cities of gold in cliffs of sandstone mesas in remote valleys beyond the black volcanic peaks.
It’s mid-July now and yesterday when it was bright and hot, I was picking ripe figs and noticed the odd branch actually brushed the ground now, pulled down by the two fat black figs ready to pick. My attention was focused on the two ripe figs and how to reach them in the shade by the wall. I was about to blindly push past the fig branches and around the pots of tomatoes to pick the figs when something caused me to look more closely at the shady ground where I intended to step: almost invisible on the ground under the ripe black figs was a large, beige-colored rattlesnake in a low profile coil.
This snake lives under the back step and knows my morning routine in the garden of red clay pots. She doesn’t bother to rattle because she trusts me, as do the blue-bellied sky lizards who wait for me with the hose to wash out scores of caramel-colored cockroaches.
The rattlesnake that lives in the front yard was determined to come inside the front room last autumn. He would come and press his nose against the glass by the front door. Indoors, the dogs, Tigger and Thelma, could see the snake and went wild with concern. The snake stayed awhile then left.
Finally one evening the snake came while the dogs were away. The dogs left the broken screen door wide open. Persistence paid off for the snake, and he found a way to get inside the house.
The dogs soon returned and smelled at once what happened. They tracked the snake in the front room and cornered him by the front door and barked furiously until I came out with a dust mop and gently guided the snake out the front door.
The dogs were devastated by the breach of their sanctuary and ever after they came in the front door with a certain hesitation because the snake got inside once and might do it again.
Some years before this, I came in from the front room where my studio is located now, and I heard a loud rattling from the direction of the kitchen. Right away I could tell by the sound this was not the rattler that lived underneath the kitchen floor, the one that used to rattle whenever I stepped near the refrigerator door. No, the sound wasn’t coming from under any floor, the buzzing rattle sound was coming directly from my kitchen.
The merry Feng Shui remodeler never bothered to fix the holes in the wall behind the stove and the refrigerator; a small spotted Sonora skunk used to come out into the kitchen from under the stove in the winter, so it was inevitable that one day a snake would follow the same route. The big red rattlesnake looked at me and at the kitchen in bewilderment. I opened the side door and used the broom to guide the snake outside. When she felt the outdoor air on her face she accelerated and was gone.
A large light-colored Western diamondback rattlesnake lived under the house, under the kitchen floor when I moved into the house. At first she didn’t recognize my footsteps and used to rattle loudly under the kitchen floor where I stood. I jumped every time she rattled then gradually she stopped rattling because she got used to me. I suspected that she was the source of the half dozen baby rattlesnakes that appeared on the living room floor in 1989.
My father and his wife, Kathy, came for a visit. I had gone grocery shopping but I’d left the door unlocked for them and they made themselves comfortable on the couch in the living room. My stepmother was almost nine months pregnant with my youngest half brother, Leland. They were watching TV waiting for me to get back when Milo the cat alerted them to the six newborn baby rattlesnakes wiggling on the old brick floor next to the fireplace where there were small holes in the plaster. My father and Milo promptly killed five of the newborn snakes; their tiny mangled remains greeted us by the front door when Gus and I returned with the groceries.
While my father recounted the bravery of Milo and himself, Gus spotted the lone surviving baby rattler under the couch where my pregnant stepmother sat only moments before. Oddly, only a few weeks earlier, Gus had talked about wanting to get a baby rattlesnake; yeah, nice idea, I said at the time because I thought it would be impossible for Gus to get a baby rattlesnake.
The mother rattlesnake must have given birth to them under the dining room floor near the back side of the fireplace, right next to the hole in the plaster that leads into the living room. Gus scooped up the tiny snake in a glass jar. The newborn snake was the diameter of a piece of spaghetti; coiled flat it was only the size of a quarter. Gus fed it live crickets from the pet store for two weeks and then the snake was ready to eat baby pinkie mice, and before long, it ate small mice. Gus named the snake Evo Atrox.
In the snake’s first year it quickly grew to more than twelve inches in length and was big around as my ring finger. Like macaws and parrots, rattlesnakes have to grow fast to fool the predators or they won’t survive infancy.
The second year, in September, the rattlesnake became restless and tried to get out of its cage. It wouldn’t eat. The winter hibernation instinct perhaps.
The third year when Evo got restless I had a plan.
A few months earlier in the summer I’d discovered a terrible thing — a fine rattler got entangled in poultry netting and had died some days before. I removed the poultry netting, but I didn’t forget the big snake that lived on the west side slope about seventy feet below the west door to the house.
That September, when Evo began to move restlessly, Gus and I decided to take Evo to the eco-niche vacated by the dead snake, and set him free. There was a big palo verde tree next to a pile of lava boulders with intriguing holes under them. A perfect home for a snake. For the first year while Evo transitioned, I planned to bring him white mice and to keep a bowl of water under the palo verde tree. We slid open the cage door and Evo glided out and went into the hole at the foot of the boulders under the palo verde tree. We felt proud of ourselves for returning the snake to the wild.
The next morning the dogs were barking on the west side of the house at eight a.m. and when I looked out the window on the west side of the house, I saw a rattlesnake that looked like Evo. But I thought it must be one of Evo’s relatives that lived under the house.
About two hours later, the dogs were barking again on the west side, and when I opened the door, the rattlesnake was leaning against the door and flopped into the house. It was Evo. We retrieved the snake cage and water bowl from the site down the hillside and guided Evo into his cage where he’s remained ever since.
CHAPTER 17