Dispatches from the Flying M

Capitol Tree

Today the tree that will stand in front of the United States Capitol as the Capitol Christmas Tree came to our town, on its 4,000 mile tour from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest to Washington DC.  The tree is an 85-foot blue spruce, and it appears to be a beauty.  We couldn't see much of it--only one end of the very long trailer is open for viewing.  But we could see the top, and partway down its considerable length, as you can see in the picture below. 

This is the first time in history that Arizona has provided the tree, so we felt privileged to be able to visit with it for a few minutes and wish it well on its journey. We signed the side of the truck, along with thousands of our fellow Arizonans. In addition to this tree, Arizona is providing 80 trees for use inside the Capitol, and Arizona's schoolchildren have made almost 10,000 ornaments to hang on them.  The creator of one of those ornaments will travel to Washington to light the Capitol Tree with Speaker Pelosi.  

     

Ringtail

One of the most reclusive creatures in the Sonoran desert is the ringtail. They're Arizona's state mammal. About the size of a squirrel, they're elongated by an extravagant tail often compared to a feather boa. They're nocturnal, fierce predators of small rodents, lizards, snakes, birds and insects, although they'll also eat fruits and berries.  They're magnificent climbers, with rear feet that rotate 180 degrees so they can go down vertical faces nose-first.  The picture here is from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the greatest sources of information about all the creatures inhabiting this part of the world.  Please take a look at their page, since I've borrowed their photo. 

We don't actually live in the Sonoran Desert, but in a high desert transition zone. We've never seen any evidence of ringtails in our neighborhood, and the only couple I've seen outside captivity were roadkill.

Until last night.

We've had some strange nocturnal visitor for several nights. We started calling it the jackalope because when it runs across the roof it sounds much heavier than the birds or rodents who usually come calling. The dogs, which usually ignore such things, have been upset by it on several occasions, resulting in loud fits of barking that wake us up in the middle of the night.

Last night, they barked and I went out to see what they were barking at.  Up in the rafters over the front sidewalk, I saw it, crouching on a beam, its generous tail tucked around it.  It looked at me. Recognizing it for the unusual visitor it was, I went back to the door and called the rest of the family. By the time they could get out without dogs, it got tired of waiting and sprang from the beam into the carport, a flash of gray-brown fur and that striped tail.

Later, the dogs barked again.  I went out and heard a strange noise that seemed to be coming from our outside freezer, in the carport: a scratching noise, accompanied by a bizarre sort of bark.  After ascertaining that it wasn't inside the freezer, we realized that there was a space beneath and behind the freezer, an open area for the appliance's motor (or whatever it's called on freezers).  I tugged the freezer away from the wall and the ringtail darted out into the night. This time the whole family got a look at it.

We don't want to discourage anything that eats rodents and snakes from living here, but inside the freezer is not the best place to have a ringtail. And living too close to the house is just going to drive the dogs nuts and interfere with our sleep.  But I'm delighted that we actually have one in the neighborhood, and hope it feels free to come around whenever it wants to. It's an amazing little creature, and since we don't have chickens it's not likely to predate anything important to us. I hope he comes back soon.

Water

When you live most of your life in the city, you get used to the idea that you can turn the faucet and water will come out.  It's one of those things you take for granted. 

In the country, it's not always that easy.

Last night we had a major storm, lots of thunder and lightning, a pretty good amount of rain.  Not as much as they had in town, but still, in a summer that has been way too dry, it was a helpful downpour.

But that flash of blue-white light outside, with the thunder right on top of it loud enough to shake the house?

That was the lightning hitting the wellhouse.

Capacitor fried, pump fried.

Fortunately, we knew who to call, and the well people were out first thing this morning.  They had to remove all 200+ feet of pipe, replace the bottom section that had a hole in it, replace the pump, replace the electrical box.  And now our water tastes weird, plastic.  We're hoping that's something that won't last long, because until this point our tap water tasted better than any bottled water on the market.

But the faucets and showers run again, the toilets flush, and these things--so commonplace for most of us these days--are very, very good things.

Grass-fed arteries

My friend and main beef supplier, rancher Dennis Moroney, writes a column about contemporary ranching in the Sierra Vista Herald.  His latest installment runs down some of the many benefits of grass-fed beef vs. feedlot beef.

As an aside--and strictly anecdotal, without a shred of scientific evidence--I have high cholesterol.  Living in San Diego, I had to take a statin medication daily.  Since moving to Arizona my "bad" cholesterol count has gone down precipitously, to the point that I take one pill every other day and my doctor keeps contemplating taking me off it altogether.

There are a variety of different possible reasons.  Although I used to try to walk every day at lunchtime, the sorts of exercise I get here are more varied and sometimes considerably more taxing.  But I still spend most of every day at the keyboard.  The foods that make up my diet haven't changed dramatically, but the source of those foods has changed.  When I eat beef (or goat) now, more often than not it's grass-fed.  I don't know how much cholesterol there is in chicken, but what I eat is free range.  Much of the produce I eat is grown locally, by people I know, and it's mostly organic.  Could these dietary adjustments be making the difference?

All that, and it tastes better, too!

Unidentified Flying Objects

Who's good with airplanes?  This beast buzzed the house three times in a row today.  It looks familiar, but I'm not good enough to figure out what it is.  Pretty cool, though, especially flying past at low altitude.

As long as we're at it, this strange moth was hanging onto my tire the other night.  It looked like it was made of thin balsa wood...  any ideas what it is?

Neither of these are common visitors.

The end of segregation

This time of year, wildlife at the ranch tends to be the invading hordes of insects and those--like the toad living in the laundry room who's the size of a VW Beetle--who are here to eat them.  We have crickets performing symphonies in the great room, spiders trying to web us in from inside and outside, enough sphinx moths clinging to the west side of the house that it's starting to list, and their scouts inside...

As I've noted here many times, we leave one gate into our back pasture open so random creatures can come in and graze there.  Often we get cows, and occasionally we get horses.  But never, before today, have we had both at once!  Cows and horses, standing side by side like equals, like brothers and sisters.  It was a stirring site.

Monsoon season is here

According to the calendar, monsoon season started a couple of weeks ago.  But according to us, it started a couple of afternoons ago.  After being missed by three miles by a major rainstorm on Saturday night, we finally got a good downpour--a full inch in 40 minutes.  The ditch that bisects our back pasture became a raging river we could hear from the house.  The spadefoots came out and sang their mating song.  It's the season we love.

So of course, this afternoon I have to drive to Phoenix, where it's projected to be 104 today...

Roadrunner

Ever since the dawn of humanity, or at least since Warner Bros introduced their animated Road Runner character in 1948, the magnificent roadrunner has been a symbol of the wide open spaces of the American west.  One of the great pleasures of moving to rural Arizona was the opportunity to see roadrunners on a regular, sometimes daily basis. 

That pleasure was mitigated somewhat by the vendetta one had against me (roadrunners mate for life, and I had, accidentally and sorrowfully, hit one with my car when she suddenly darted in front of me--my theory is that the one stalking me was her mate).  He had a blood-red spot behind one eye that I believe was a badge of honor signifying the taking of at least one human life previously, and he used to try to peck his way through windows when he knew I was on the other side of them.

But he's been gone for a couple of years now, probably having joined his mate in that big desert in the sky, or else relocated by the underground roadrunner mob after taking out some other hapless human. 

This year I've been seeing a lot of a large specimen, close to the house, but it wasn't until yesterday that I found out why.  I was walking into our bedroom.  The door to the master bathroom was open and the bathroom window was open to the outside, and I heard a frenetic clicking noise, the kind of sound that if you hear it while you're driving, you should immediately address it by turning up the stereo until you can no longer hear it.  But I wasn't driving, so I knew it was a roadrunner, close by, and engaged in some sort of important activity.  I went into the bathroom and looked out the window.

Just outside the window is our pond, and next to the pond a big, thick bush with bright reddish-orange flowers that hummingbirds love.  On top of the bush, clicking and working at something just under the upper thicket of leaves, was a roadrunner.  He or she didn't pay any attention to me but kept up the racket and the thrashing until finally settling down somewhere under that top layer.

My belief is that there's a nest in the bush, but it's too dense to see inside.  But if you spend some time in the bathroom (not the most comfortable room in the house, but pretty nice just the same, with saltillo tile and a beautiful Mexican sink and lots of reclaimed barn wood and a clawfoot tub), as I did this morning after my shower, you can hear someone moving around in there, and if you come around the corner at just the right time, as I did this morning with the dogs, you can spot it swooping down from the bush to the ground.

Here's a picture of the bird from yesterday, just before it got comfortable under the leaves.  It was a truly odd sight to see this big thing flailing around, swimming on top of the leaves.

 

Storm light

I was driving home a couple of nights ago, with the sunset behind me and a glowering storm ahead, the skies dark and split by lightning, but illuminated at the same time by the rose and lavender hues of the sun going down through a sky colored by smoke from some area wildfires.

This isn't the world's greatest photograph, but it shows Davis Road, which goes from just outside Tombstone down into the valley, eventually merging with the road that runs past our place, and it's representative of the views that sometimes distract me from my driving.

Neighborhood gang

A lot of neighborhoods have gangs, hanging out on street corners, causing trouble.  We've been seeing this bunch around lately, out by the mailboxes, loitering down the road.  Yesterday they found themselves in our back pasture and spent the day, seven of them in all. 

About 5:30, I was changing the water in and cleaning out the trough and dog bowls in the dogs' corral, and the horses were watching me over the fence.  I realized that since they had spent a long hot day in the pasture with no water, they were probably thirsty.  I went into the barn and got the wading pool we put in the corral for the dogs, took it into the pasture, and started running water into it from a hose.  The horses drank it up so fast I had to check for leaks, because the pool would not fill up--but it was just because seven thirsty horses can down a lot of water.  Gradually they became more accepting of me, as their thirst was slaked, to the point that one of them followed me around and nudged me if I stopped petting her.

They're gone this morning.  I hope they come back, because it's nice to have horses around--and nice, too, not to have responsibility for them.  Sort of like being grandparents, I imagine--you can enjoy them but then they go back where they belong and they're not your problem anymore.