Yep, that's Joe Rattler, hanging out underneath a rock approximately one foot off a hiking trail Beck and I trekked up the other day. Yikes! He was actually pretty chill; there were rumors of a different snake who was hanging out by a tree and "really angry." Thankfully by the time we made it to that part of the trail, Mr. Angry Snake had found better things to do than scare the pants off of Nyets. Phew. So that's the second bona fide killer and embodiment of sin that we've encountered in our various hikes. And I survived, despite its merciless attempt to kill me by sitting still under a rock. Beck owes me for risking my life to accompany her on these hikes. (Note - in the interest of my own survival / urine-free status of my shorts, Beck led the way for the bulk of our hiking. You may call this wussiness; I call it "Darwinian adaptation"). Here's a snap of the Beck mocking my trepidations at the ol' hitching post:
So in addition to near-deaths by poisonous snakes, Beck and I had an eventful Memorial Day Weekend. After encountering the Indiana Jones movie closely on Thursday, and after Beck got home late Friday, we decided not to rock Scottsdale's collective nightlife and stayed home with Chinese. Excellent. Crosswords may or may not have been done. We both worked Saturday - I had the usual uneventful day, but Beck had a ridiculous case with a sick kitty. They had placed an esophogeal tube in a cat, and everything was going fine when suddenly it started filling up with air everywhere. The best they can guess is that it got a tear in its trachea from the intubation and the anaestheisa gas was leaking into the cat's tissues. But then gas started showing up in the cat's abdomen, and if you got even an F+ in Anatomy class, you recall that there's not really a direct path from the mediastinum to the abdomen. So unless this was one of those rare cats with tube-and-circle anatomy, there was a coincidental second tear in its diaphragm, or something equally bizarre. Because of all this, the cat essentially inflated, and Beck et alii had to deflate it to keep it alive, and then check it into the emergency clinic overnight for observation. All of this was understandably distressing for the Beck, and she fretted over the kitty for the remainder of Saturday and Sunday - fortunately, everything turned out fine (for the time being - the cat is still sick), and the owners were understanding of the freaky circumstances that caused their cat to balloon. The general freakiness of the episode was confirmed by other doctors, so it's been thoroughly confirmed that Beck did nothing wrong. There are acceptable risks to procedures, and sometimes those risks include weird stuff.
That whale of a Saturday more or less incapacitated our Saturday night, but we picked up festivities for Sunday - the weather was silly beautiful (a high of 80 or so, nutsoid for this time of year), so we hit up Camelback. We took the other route this time; unfortunately, I forgot the camera so I'll have to head back soon. It's pretty steep and involves much more scrambling to get to the top. We didn't see any snakes, but we saw plenty of chuckwalla lizards, big fat guys who have the funny habit of crawling into tight spaces and puffing up their bodies so you can't grab them. Awesome. ANyhoo, great hike, pretty serious workout. I rolled my ankle on the way back down, but thanks to having sprained my ankle 14,000 times in high school and college, it seems I have no ligaments left to tear: I was fine, and even played Ultimate Sunday afternoon. (including a captain ridiculous layout grab of a scoober to win the game. WOOHOO).
After Ulti, we headed down to D&C's for sausage, corn on the cob and Mario Kart on the Wii. Beck and I are terrible at this game. Ugh. A lot of fun, but if I drive into one more pit of lava... anyways, good food, good times, great to see our Phoenician pals.
Monday, Beck and I headed to McDowell Mountains to take a five mile hike through rattlesnake country. Aside from the shadow cast by imminent death, it was a nice hike; not too steep, great views, lots and lots of cactus to highlight the scenery. Here's a smattering of photos to keep your 21st century dearth of an attention span focused:
(1,1) Fields of choalla cacti; (1,4) You can see the Fountain Hills fountain and surrounding disc golf course in this shot; (1,5) Beck binocking; (2,2) Memorial Day Photo Op; (2,4) & (2,5) & (3,2) Beck's artisitc shots of octochillo cacti; (3,1) Close-up of the Hitching Post; (3,3) Trail to the peak where we saw Joe; (3,5) The "Saguaro with Dreads," according to the Beck.
Came back to the condo for some quality poolside chilling, and I mean chilling: it was still pretty temperate Monday, so not exactly ideal for floating with your mesh-bottomed raft. COLD. We capped off the weekend with some quality burritos and Summer Sams, quite nice.
And Beck and I have returned to the working week unwillingly; Beck rented some movies to keep the party going, so we've tackled The Bourne Ultimatum and the first hour and a half on 3:10 to Yuma in the past couple of nights. Why the first 1:30? Take a wild guess. I've also be assaulting the world by using my car as little as possible; I ran three and four miles in the past two days and biked 20 miles yesterday and have already gone on some long walks on errands and with the dogs today. I think this is supposed to make me feel good about myself.
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