Rats, Mice, and Snakes

You'd think I'd be better about such things.

I wouldn't say it's a lot, but the amount of time I spend worrying about rats, mice, and snakes is certainly … noticeable. While it's true that things like that live up here in the desert, I honestly don't know if they're a problem in my little piece of it.

The land around here is littered with holes, which I take to be burrows, but one thing about the desert that's becoming increasingly obvious is that it doesn't change much. In fact, without someone or something doing something to it, it hardly ever changes at all.

It has no reason to, for one thing, but more importantly, I think, is what makes it the desert in the first place: no water.

Back in Junior High I heard the joke that science had discovered the universal solvent but had no place to put it (you see, being a universal solvent, it would eat through everything). Not particularly funny, I admit, but it laid the way for later on when I learned that water, of all things, comes as close to being a universal solvent as anything nature has given us.

Trees, rocks, dirt, mountains, you name it, water wears it down. Think of the Grand Canyon. It also, I believe, does its job at tearing apart vegetation and probably even dead animals.

There is no water in the desert, which I guess explains its name. This is taking me some getting used to. The guide book for the local Joshua Tree National Forest mentions in passing when talking about litter that many things like egg shells or orange peels that can be more or less safely discarded everywhere else have to be properly disposed of in the desert. Instead of rotting away and enriching the soil or whatever, they just lay out in the sun and dehydrate.

And, stick around forever.

Which brings me back to my burrows. Yep, they're out there. I'd guess there are a couple of hundred on my property alone but I have no idea how old they are or if they're “active.” With no rains to change the land, to crumble their edges, fill them in, or do any of that stuff, they just sit there.

A few days before I legally owned this place I was up here giving it a visit, looking at it and marveling that it would soon be mine. I was checking it out, seeing more closely what I was getting myself into, when a rabbit ran across what I now call the back yard (the area of my property that's outside the chain link fence).

Yes, I smiled.

In the four months or so since then, I've seen nary a thing on the surface. No lizards, no snakes, no varmints of any description. Nothing, really, except that one fuzzybug and ants both red and black.

I'm not entirely surprised by that, given as it's winter and I think this is when any self-respecting creature would be hibernating far underground instead of freezing it's ass off on the surface. When spring comes and encourages the plants to do more than just hunker down and put up with the winds, I suspect there may be more activity, maybe even more rabbits.

And then, I fear, more rats, mice, and snakes, but I honestly have no idea.

I'm worried about them being a problem without even knowing if they'll be a problem at all. Until I've lived here a year, I really have no way of knowing how “active” the land will be.

I remember feeling the same way about coyotes.

They're obviously up here and I've seen a couple, or the same one twice, on the road a few miles from my home. Once during the night when I was watching the sky fall in little chunks of meteors I heard them, far away, howling at something or other. I assembled a small pile of handy rocks near the door to throw at them only to learn from Jim across the street that he used to raise chickens and never had any problem with coyotes.

Which laid to rest my worries about Minardi fending off roving herds.

But, back to the rats. I've never seen any sign of them on the ground, but they're also very sneaky. A few weeks ago when I finally got around to cleaning out a shed that had been erected right next to the rear of the house I did (for me), a pretty thorough cleaning and in all my brushing and sweeping found a total of one of what my mom referred to as “calling cards.”

And that single, solitary tiny turd may have just as easily come from a mouse. And that, like everything else up here, may have been left any time since the day the shed was built.

When I tore down the bush by the corner of the house to get rid of the hiding place it offered to snakes and rats, the one living thing I disturbed in the process was a moth.

One moth.

So, yeah, I'm worried. All those burrows I found inside the fence have had their openings stepped on to more easily see if something comes out. But until I live through all four seasons up here, I have no idea if I have anything to worry about or not.