I'm Afraid Of Desert Critters

I am not a native of Arizona. I am not even sure I am a courageous enough person to live in the desert among the creepy crawlies who enjoy their environment and habitat here. There are many things about the desert that are redeeming and many people, including me, love it. I just wish it felt safer.

When I first arrived it was November. That is the time of year when all the critters go underground and wait to come out when it gets hot again. I had heard tales of them but as yet had not encountered any.

I put my fears in the back of my mind and enjoyed the winter without the tons of snow and overcast skies I had been accustomed. I put my boxes of warm clothes and sweaters away and dealt with the cool evenings by throwing on a light jacket that I only needed sometimes. It was pleasant and I forgot totally about what was coming.

In April I began thinking about the critters after my neighbor reminded me to pay attention where I was walking. That was not a comfortable suggestion, but I took it seriously and walked carefully back to my house.

Several weeks lapsed and I saw nothing scary. I began to get my confidence back again. Not that I stopped looking where I planted my feet, just that I hadn’t seen anything unusual.

Then one day I had a complete turnaround that knocked me for a loop. The first thing that happened was I opened my friend’s gate and started to step through and saw a rattlesnake coiled and sleeping next to the gate. I quickly shut the gate and ran out back to get some help. When we came back the snake was gone. That was extremely disconcerting. Now my fears were real and no longer a myth. Now I understood about watching the ground.

I went into my friend’s house and sat down in the living room for a chat. As we sat there drinking ice tea I saw something crawling up the wall. It was pinkish-clear and shaped like the pictures I’d seen of a scorpion. I tried to be casual in asking what it was, and to my horror, it was indeed a scorpion. My neighbor killed it with her shoe and sat back down and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

I was shaking inside but did not want to show my cowaderdness. A little while later, I got up to go to the bathroom and as I went around the corner of the kitchen I stopped in my tracks. On the wall was a huge hairy spiderish looking thing on the wall. It did not look real until I saw it move. “What is this?” I called out. “Oh, that’s just a tarantula”, she said calmly as she grabbed an envelope, scooped it up and put it down outside the door.

I had been initiated all in one day. I was beside myself. Like all initiations, my world was turned upside down. I made my way home, knowing that I could never live where there were so many scary things that were part of a normal day in the desert.

Soon after that, a dog in the neighborhood licked a Colorado River Toad while I was there and went into convulsions. She had to be practically drowned with water rushing down her throat before she could come back to normal. It affected her neurological system and for a while she could barely walk, even after the water treatment and she foamed at the mouth for several hours.

That experience made me what I am today: an ax murderer. I was thinking about that just this week when I put my dogs out into a side yard before going to bed. Just as I put them out, a huge toad moved right in front of them. Now, I don’t know if you have ever seen one of these creatures, but they are gigantic, ugly, and strongly resemble “Java the Hut”. I whisked my dogs back into the house and went for the ax.

These toads are not fast and tend to get themselves into corners to get away from you. Because I saw that dog almost die a few years ago, I have no mercy for these poisonous toads. A strong protective urge comes over me that out weighs my fear. I held the ax high over my head and came down hard on the creature over and over until I knew it was dead.

Just the day before, as I was sitting on the porch of my house enjoying the breeze against the backdrop of a very hot day, I saw my two cats carefully moving in the same direction toward a ladder that was against the house. Then I heard the distinct rattle of a rattlesnake. I yelled at the cats to stay away, which did nothing. I started throwing rocks in between the cats and the snake. I got the cats to move away and hastely picked them up and put them in the house. The snake coiled itself up and went to sleep.

I sat watching the snake feeling totally helpless and thinking about all the times I had not been protected or not been able to protect myself, my son, or others. I did not know what to do. I felt paralyzed. I knew I could not kill the snake because I was too scared of it. After about a half hour the snake woke up and slithered across the yard in the opposite direction from where I was sitting and disappeared.

Now you may be wondering why I am still living in a place that on such a continuous basis scares the bejebees out of me? That is a question I ask myself many times a day from April until November every year. I have never lived in a place where I have been aware of so much danger. My innocence and naivety shock me and I yearn for the safety that I previously enjoyed.

It is all very clear to me now. I am not a native of the desert and honestly don’t believe I’m cut out for it. The desert is beautiful but foreign to my being. Oh, did I tell you about the gila monster?

GREEN GENES

My maternal grandmother loved her gardens. By the time I was 9 years old her peony, rose and iris gardens, vegetable gardens and orchards not only caught my attention, but drew me into a deep fascination and new way of being in touch with cycles and process. I am only now beginning to understand…

The first awareness I had of Grandma’s magical world occurred in April 1959. She was a brittle and cantankerous woman with practically everybody. I was scared of her. For some reason, that day, I stopped by her house. I was out on my Huffy seeking adventures that the safe little Kansas town made possible.

I could tell Grandma was home because I could see laundry flying on the clothesline against the blue spring sky filled with big white fluffy clouds. I parked my bike by a series of buckets that lined the garage. Later I found out that the buckets were there to catch rainwater for her plants.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. When I yelled out, “Grandma”, she called up from the basement and told me to come down. I had never been in the basement at my grandparent’s house before. I felt the dark dampness and a significant drop in temperature as I descended the stairs. I remember swallowing hard and feeling a tightening that was taking over my tummy.

She was bent in two, leaning over hundreds of tiny pots and trays of dark, rich dirt. “Watcha doin’?” was all I could get out. She twisted around in her cotton-print dress and snorted her reply, “planting.” It wasn’t a friendly “planting” but I assuaged my desire to run back up the stairs by reassuring myself that my mother and aunts had grown up to be adults with this woman and probably, I would too.

Then out of the darkness, she extended her hand toward me. Her body was still bent over with her head down. She didn’t look up. Some tiny seeds dropped into my trembling hand. I had received my initiation into her world. I’m not sure if anyone else in my family ever got to enter her gardening universe, but I know the lessons I learned in her domain turned my life upside down.

It took us hours that day, and several others, to plant all those seeds and place the pots carefully on little shelves she had built in front of the windows around the dank, stone basement. We worked in silence, which felt to my nine-year-old self like an ancient, sacred ritual. I followed her lead and because she offered no words or direction that told me what to do or how to do it, I became adept at watching.

Every day I found myself descending those stairs to be with my new master and her plants. Sometimes she would run her hands over the tops of the little green shoots and talk right out loud to them. She would tell them that they were wonderful. Beautiful. She said things to those plants that apparently never occurred to her to say to her own children, or grandchildren.

When school let out for the summer, I found that I wanted to go to Grandma’s as soon as I got up every morning. I didn’t try to explain this impulse to anyone, because I didn’t understand why it felt so important to me. There was just no place else I wanted to be.

One morning I arrived to find my grandmother outside, leaning over a flowerbed surrounded by all our little pots. She didn’t look up when I came into view but handed me a funny-shaped metal tool with a worn, wooden handle. I got down on my knees beside her and began to imitate what she was doing.

We transplanted the sprouts into the ground all morning. At five minutes to noon, she suddenly stood up straight and literally ran into the house. I followed her, a bit bewildered and perplexed. She pulled off her sweaty, dirt-covered frock and slipped into a clean, starched dress. This, she covered with a full apron with hand-embroidered flowers on the pocket. I wondered if handy-work was her wintertime garden, and if I would be old enough this winter to learn how embroider flowers on my clothes?

She stirred the soup that began bubbling on the stove. She took cold cuts and cheese out of the refrigerator and placed them with quick precision onto a turquoise plate. Beside the meat she put a pile of carefully counted pieces of thick, white, spongy Wonder Bread. She was moving so quickly around the kitchen that I slid under the table to keep out of the way.

Just as the teakettle whistled and the coco clock struck noon, my grandfather walked through the door. He sat down at the table without a word and began to make a sandwich. Grandma served him with grace in silent, slow motion. It was as if she had been in the kitchen, suspended in the same position he’d left her when he departed for work at eight. It was as though we hadn’t been outside digging in the warm earth all morning.

At five minutes to one, our secret intact, we both watched my grandfather pull out of the driveway. Before the back end of Grandpa’s Chrysler was even out of sight, the dirty clothes were back on and Grandma had her hands in the earth again.

These gardening years lasted until I grew up and went away to live my bigger, more complicated life. It’s funny how every winter I find myself looking to embroidery my feelings and stories into flowers on clothes or towels. When spring comes, just like the bulbs poised underneath the last snow, I feel something awaken in me. The old magic flows through me, and I can’t wait to get my hands into the dirt. I watch the flowers in my own gardens break through the earth, bud, blossom, and fall away. What wonderful gifts my grandmother shared with me! Feeling the cycles of life, and learning to tend life with love fills me with sheer delight, day after day, season after season, year after year.