Your REALTOR may or may not inform you about our desert critters here in Tucson. We live in a neighborhood called Tucson Estates II, and it is surrounded by Tucson Mountain Park, which in turn abuts Saguaro National Park West, in the Tucson Mountains on Tucson's western flank. Just down Kinney road a couple of miles from us is the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. Google it. It's fantastic.
It doesn't look like it from this photo, but docent making the presentation to an audience of better than 200 people last Saturday night is holding this rattlesnake four feet from his body. If you ask me, that's not enough distance.
I don't think I was the only one in the audience wondering what critter nailed him under the eye, but no one asked. The black and white stripes on the tail just before the rattle identify this as a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. It's four feet long. The longest verified in modern times was just a little more than seven feet long.
Rattlesnakes come in 18 different varieties in Arizona, according to our friend. They're all venomous. And venom doesn't stop with the rattlers. Not even with the snakes. This lizard below is one of two venomous lizards found in Arizona. It's the Gila (hee-la) Monster.
They're not very fast. One and one-half miles per hour is top speed. But when they bite you, they hang on for dear life until they calm down. They're not calm unless they're on terra firma. There's the problem.
One man walked into the ER at St. Mary's hospital here in Tucson with a Gila Monster firmly attached to his chest. Somehow he thought it would be cool if he picked it up and put it in his shirt. I can imagine him saying to his buddy: "Here, hold my beer and don't spill it." "Okay, get a picture of this!"
He survived.
I'm Mike in Tucson, your preferred Tucson, Arizona mortgage lender.
Think of me as your local expert.
photo copyright Mike in Tucson
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I just posted part one of a series I'm doing on the critters you might find in Sun City Grand. I don't know of anyone who has run across these in SCGrand but I was planning on educating people about the possibilities (probably more so out in Sun City Festival and up in the Trilogy areas.