Ah, Autumn...

We went for a nice walk up the slope behind our house this morning, Debbie and I, and all three dogs (Mo’i, Miki, and Lea). It’s the first morning we’ve had this season that “felt” like an autumn morning: 42 degrees when we left, 100% relative humidity, clear skies with patches of fog and mist spotted here and there. By the time we got back (an hour or so later), it was 52 degrees, but otherwise the same.

This is the season when all the plants are covered with dew in the morning. We still have some plants in bloom, and they were quite beautiful, all glistening with fine dew drops. Naturally, I forgot to bring my camera! The spider’s webs were prominent again — they’re always there, but you really don’t notice them much if they’re not dew-covered. The east end of Lawson Valley, which is pasture spotted with large live oaks, was particularly pretty. The sun had first struck it just minutes before we sighted it, and the sun’s warmth was raising tendrils of fine mist in the still morning air; they twisted and wove around the oaks in my idea of good performance art. And of course, the humid air made all the desert odors pop out. The dogs all lost their minds as we walked, following who-knows-what scent with enormous enthusiasm. Happy dogs…

Yesterday I had a bit of excitement. I was in my office, working; Debbie was off with all three dogs to an agility meet. Suddenly I heard all five house cats yowling — something that I’ve never heard before, in over 25 years of living with cats. I ran out to our livingroom to find all five cats prowling along our glass patio door, looking every which way and yowling up a storm. Anybody who knows cats knows that this is very odd behavior.

Well, when I got to the patio door and started looking around myself, I soon saw the cause of the commotion: a huge rattlesnake, easily the biggest I’ve ever seen on our property — about 6' 4” long, and very fat. I got my snake stick and a covered plastic bucket, and captured him easily enough — he didn’t act frightened or alarmed at all, as rattlesnakes usually do when I capture them. It was a bit of work to get him coiled up in the bucket, but I did it, and got the lid safely snapped on. I take the rattlesnakes I capture to a part of the National Forest that’s about five miles from where I live. I don’t want rattlesnakes in my yard, where they threaten us and our animals, but I also don’t want to kill them — they do a great deal of good in our ecosystem. So I do the catch and release thing…

Usually when I release the snakes, I have the bucket upright, snap off the lid, and then tip the bucket over, away from me. The snakes always immediately slither out and away. This fellow was a little different. When I pried off one corner of the lid, suddently the rest popped off all by itself — the snake pushed it off, and very quickly slithered out of the bucket while it was still upright. When that lid popped off, you can probably imagine how quickly I did the backwards walk! I watched from about 15 feet away; he got himself entirely out of the bucket in just a few seconds. He looked my way once, and then set off kind of sideways to me, into some nearby brush. This was a very confident snake, very different than my usual experience…