Just Another Monsoon Day In Eden

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Two days in a row now; eight tenths of an inch of rain. I remember our very first big rain and Virgil describing it as either a 'gully washer' or a 'turd floater'. The latter nomenclature seemed most fitting when that rain hit because, sure enough, all the collected cow turds that Mark had so carefully scraped out of the old barn and herded into a sinkhole came floating up and past like a sail-by at the Royal Yacht Club. Virgil looked like he was about to execute a back flip amidst his laughter when Mark recounted the event and erroneously used the term 'turd washer'. And so the term 'turd washer' stuck, so to speak.

The first image shows a classic 'turd floater'. Any ground that is very light in color is really a sheet of muddy, flowing water. You can see the rain drops bombarding the surface. Meanwhile, I was out back with my shovel in the lightning, trying to divert the torrents which had crested over our old, sanded-in ditches and were threatening the foundations of the new addition and the rat trailer itself. This is my Zen time.

We were waiting inside for the sun to dry things out a little when we heard an unusually loud shooshing noise. Our first concern was that our propane tank had let loose but it sat there well-behaved and the noise was simply rebounding off the mesa wall behind us. We tracked it down to the second nearest gas well from us where impressive amounts of gas were venting under serious pressure. It's amazing how you can know nothing about the strange plant around you but eventually come to know when something is just not right. In this case, we were both glad that we are not habitual stogie chompers. We called the producer and a recalibration occurred in reasonably short order.

Later on (WELL after the escaping gas dispersed), Mark fired up Robin's homemade barbeque grill. At 88 cents a pound, Mark had recently brought home a rack of pork ribs so big that it looked like the keyboard off someone's Steinway. It was time to cook them up since the freezer was not about to hold them. I made up a good and gooey soy sauce-based sweet and sour glaze for the event and would occasionally go out and massage a bit more of it into the ribs.

During one of my looks out the window to make sure the grill hadn't blown up yet, Ming the Merciless caught my peripheral vision. Right dead ahead of him, I saw what looked like a short length of variegated garden hose disappear into the big chico bush. Ming was in HOT pursuit. A sudden flash back to a comment made by an Indian gas field tech: "The heavy rain brings the rattlers down from the mesa tops." Two and two came together. "Mark, grab some iron, come QUICK!!!" I threw open the window to yell "MING ... NO-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!!!" Ming's prey had disappeared into the bush completely by then but I was able to do a running scoop on Ming like he was a fumbled ball. I dashed him back into the rat before he could get a bad attitude about his ruined hunting trip. Brou, the ever good dog, also came in when I called.

Meanwhile, Mark saw the snake exit at the far end of the big bush and yelled "All clear, no rattles!" What a relief! Mark suggested I get the camera out and he promised to do a little snake herding to keep it around. By then, this six foot long snake was heading into that open area that you can see just beyond the semi. This fella was no water moccasin and you can see in the second image how cleverly it is bridging itself across the puddles to avoid getting wet. Much to its frustration, I ran around to the other side of the puddles and was able to get a head-on photo before he swerved off into the brush again. Sigh, I still have not mastered the close up shot in focus with this digital camera.
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