ON SAFARI IN SCOTTSDALE

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

I have always been an animal lover.  Okay, maybe really just a dog lover. I can tolerate the occasional cat.  But last month I reached the limits of my admiration for the animal kingdom when a giant tarantula appeared on my front door.  Now generally I am not afraid of spiders.  Living in Arizona requires that you become adept at squashing any number of arachnoids with the heel of your shoe.  But this thing was roughly the size of the Volkswagen I drove in college.  Our security department takes care of wayward desert animals so I called to see if they could remove the tarantula.  Ten minutes later a young man came walking up to my front entrance with a little grin on his face.  I’m sure he thought I was some gray-haired old lady afraid of a little spider.  When I pointed to Tom the Tarantula (we were on a first-name basis by then), he turned toward the window and his mouth flew open.  “Oh my God,” he shouted. He told me he’d never seen one so large.  He eventually got a piece of paper, scraped it off the window and took it out to the street.  I had visions of Tom returning, perhaps when I was fast asleep.  But the guard assured me that within a few hours he would be eaten by a coyote or snake.  Rest in Peace, Tom.

Over the past year I’ve had an unusual number of encounters with local wildlife.  We had rattlesnakes that visited our lot when we were building the house (they are territorial, and we disrupted their space) but since we moved into the house in 2000, we haven’t seen another one.  Until last year.  They usually go into hibernation when the weather turns colder, so you can imagine my surprise when I came home from a dinner at the beginning of November to find a rattlesnake in the yard.  And not just the yard – but in Dash the Wonder Dog’s dog run.  Luckily my flashlight caught the glint of his skin, and I was able to grab Dash before he had an ugly encounter.  And me a $5,000 anti-venom vet bill.  Our security people came and took him out of my yard.  Two weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, I went out to check my backflow valve and when I lifted the cover, lo and behold, there was a rattlesnake coiled around one of the pipes.  I’ve never run so damn fast in my life.  Again, security came to the rescue, but I’m sure they were beginning to suspect I was running a breeding farm.

Last fall I also encountered one of the desert’s worst sort – the Colorado River Toad.  These toads are nothing like Kermit the Frog.  These guys are mean.  They are smooth-skinned and dark, with a distinct cranial crest that curves above each eye, giving them a killer look from the outset. They are only semi-aquatic, meaning they burrow around and seek out water sources.  Again, this toad showed up out in the dog run.  He looked so vicious that I immediately looked up types of toads, spotted the species, and learned that their defense mechanism is a poison they emit that is lethal enough to kill a dog.  The next morning he was gone. Two weeks ago, I let Dash out right before bed and saw one sitting underneath my A/C condensation pipe, basking in the water.  I took the Scarlet O’Hara approach and decided to deal with it the next morning.  Unfortunately, the bugger was still there.  Once again, Security came and caught him and remarked on his large size.  My pool man says that he’s seen more of these toads this year than in any of the 30 years he’s been working on pools.  Great.

Coyotes are a regular part of our existence, in fact, we have a coyote pathway right outside my kitchen window. Since I’ve become accustomed to them over the past 24 years, I’m not frightened by them anymore.  I just double-check they aren’t running to the supermarket when I take Dash out.  Javelinas are another animal we live with, but they usually only cause problems by destroying plants.  We shrug them off; the deer always destroyed our gardens when we lived in California.  We also have regular visits from owls, who I learned are quite cunning.  A friend lost her dog when an owl swooped down, picked it up, and carried it off to who knows where.  I had this one peering in the kitchen window a couple of years ago, but I think the sour look was due to his appraisal of my cooking skills.

Every once in a while, we get a beautiful, but equally frightening bobcat that visits our yard.  During Covid I guess he was having a hard time finding food (and it was an especially hot summer) so he camped out on our back patio almost every afternoon, hoping the occasional rabbit would step into his lair.  He truly was a beautiful animal, and I felt sorry for him, as his bony ribs heaved up and down as he panted to try to cool off.  But not sorry enough to set out a of bowl of water.  I’m hoping he found food and shelter at a non-dog owner’s home.

I’ve been tested in many ways this year, but those snakes and toads have just about taken me over the edge.  Thank God for the nice young men in our security department that come to my rescue.  I think I’m going to owe them a big check at Christmas this year.