Fires

It's the dry season here in southeastern Arizona, which means it's also fire season. Last week alone lightning from some out-of-season thunderstorms sparked blazes Wednesday in lower Carr Canyon, Thursday at the base of the Santa Rita Mountains, and Friday just across the border in New Mexico. The photo shows the plume of smoke from the second fire, officially known as the Melendrez Pass Fire, as it looked from near the San Pedro River on Saturday.

Fire is a vital force in our ecosystems. Debris that might take years to decompose in this arid climate is reduced in minutes to nutrient-rich ash by low-intensity ground fires, and even tree-killing blazes allow light to reach the forest floor and stimulate sun-loving grasses and wildflowers (great for hummingbirds and butterflies). Unfortunately, our fire cycles have been thrown so out of whack for so many decades that any fire has the potential to become catastrophic, burning woodlands and forests right down to sterile mineral soil. To reduce this hazard and protect homes bordering public lands, the Forest Service has been putting substantial resources into thinning operations in some of the more popular canyons, removing debris, flammable brush, and low-hanging branches that fires can climb into the tree canopy ("ladder fuels"). They've even burned some of the debris piles, so it's not like a timber harvest operation that impoverishes the ecosystem by removing biomass along with all its nutrients.

Thunderstorms are a mixed blessing, especially this time of year when they produce more electricity than precipitation. If we're lucky, we won't have any more until the monsoon pattern develops, adding enough moisture to the storms to douse any fires they start.

Fire and Rain

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain...
- James Taylor

It's been a fire-and-rain week, with some wind thrown in for good measure. On Thursday, I noticed a couple of good-sized burned areas by the highway that runs parallel to the Huachuca Mountains. Cigarette, I thought, Damned smoking litterbugs. But no, it looks like another case of alcohol + testosterone = insanity. Seems that a couple of idiots, described by witnesses as one young and one middle-aged male, were cruising down the highway tossing lit fireworks out of their car every few yards. No structures were lost despite at least seven different sources of ignition, and the wildlife habitat will be the better for it, but I shudder to think of all the what-ifs.

And rain and wind, too. We're in the middle of a storm right now, and Tom's standing by our electronic rain monitor calling out the upward-creeping increments: "Eight hundredths...twelve hundredths...." A little storm yesterday dropped a trace of rain at our house (while we were gone, dammit!), but fearsome downbursts from far bigger tormentas put an early end to Friday's hummingbird banding session and almost kept us from getting into the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (after seeing it, we wish it had - we'd have saved $13).

Today may be retroactively declared the first official day of the monsoon. Meterologists backdate to the first of three consecutive days when the dew point is 55° F. or higher. We're running a few days behind average, but it'll be okay if the storms don't fizzle out again, as they often have in recent years.

We're still riding pretty high off last summer's and winter's moisture. Most of the hummingbirds we caught at our two banding stations this week were juvies, and several showed good "baby fat," suggesting that they were well fed in the nest. But these babes and the southbound migrants already beginning to arrive will need more food, and that's going to take rain and plenty of it. Think wet thoughts...

Cousin Slim comes to visit

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
-- D.H. Lawrence

It was one of those hot, hot days, and when a breeze kicked up at midday I began to worry about a few tender young plants still in starter pots. Pepper seedlings can handle temperatures in the 90s, but single-digit humidities combined with a breeze can turn them into shriveled little mummies in a matter of minutes.

Out on the patio, I did a double take. It looked like the gardening fairy had beat me to it and placed a thin gray hose into the tub that partially protected the tiny chilitos from the elements.


A quick peek over the side of the tub confirmed that it was not a hose at all, but the rear third of a Sonoran Whipsnake (Masticophis bilineatus). I dashed back into the house to grab a camera and returned to capture the event in pixels. But this was hardly the snake's best side, so I lightly touched it near its tail, outside the box. Up popped a foxy snout and brilliant amber eyes.


A couple of quick flicks of the tongue, a couple of clicks of the shutter, and the snake's head disappeared into the tub again. Dang...

In "Snake," the poem quoted above, D.H. Lawrence owns up to struggling with the "education" of his childhood:

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

Ultimately, "those voices" won out over Lawrence's fascination with the snake (a venomous species), and he picked up a log and chucked it at the poor creature. I always managed to resist my family's efforts at "education," so harming this whipsnake never entered my mind. But in the quest for a better photo, I stroked its hindparts again. This was too much for it, and it shot out of the tub, nailing me on the hand with its needle teeth before vanishing under the house.

And immediately I regretted it...
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

I had been a boorish host, groping my guest for the sake of a photo opp. If he honors us with another visit, I'll treat him with deference befitting "one of the lords of life." --SW
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It's the time of year, I suppose - Julie Zickefoose just blogged on a similar visitor, though not welcomed quite as wholeheartedly as ours. --SW