Arizona August 2012

Mexican Jay Aphelocoma wollweberi

These guys are not the same species as the Western Scrub Jays in your back yard.

For some reason, looking at this bird makes me want some whiskey.

Chiricahua Leopard Frog

A lot of effort is being put into keeping them from going extinct.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

Mexican Spotted Owl

The Mexican population of Spotted Owls spill over into Southeast Arizona.  Given their geographical isolation from the Spotted Owls in California, along with their different calls, many consider them to be a separate species.

Butterfly 1

Butterfly 2

Painted Lady Vanessa cardui

Butterfly 3

Butterfly 3

American Snout

One of the most bizarre-looking butterflies.

Butterfly 4

Butterfly 5: Marine Blue Leptotes marina ???

Butterfly 6

"My mother's coming to visit."

"In that case, I'm going fishing,"

No, you're not!"

"Yes, I am!"

"You've been drinking!"

"Only beer.  Gimme a kiss!

"Go away. I hate you!"

Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor

Butterfly 7: Elada Checkerspot ???

Arizona Sister or Mexican Sister

Considered by some to be a race of California Sister, Adelpha bredowii, but considered to be a full species by others.

Butterfly 8:  Checkered White pontia protodice ???



Roseate Spoonbill

Glendale Recharge Ponds August 19th, 2012.

It was 104F when I took this photo from 200 yards away, so I don't want to hear any complaints.

Yes, this is the Tombstone that they keep making movies about.

Shooting bad guys is hard work.  Union rules says we get half an hour for lunch.

Car we saw in the parking lot at Boot Hill, where they buried people in Tombstone.

Would you hire ghost busters whose marketing budget allowed for one can of window marker paint?

Hey, these guys could use the services of GIT!

Wilson's Phalaropes

Glendale Recharge Ponds

This is a nervous smile.

I told Csaba that it's legal to wear your gun in Arizona.

He didn't believe me until we ran into a birder at Miller Canyon who had a .45 automatic.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

The price we paid for getting glimpses of this bird while standing in tall grass at the monastery in St. David, Arizona in the summer was a nice case of chiggers.  I am typing this with one hand, while scratching my ankles with the other.

Curve-billed Thrasher Toxostoma curvirostre

One of the few birds that I can imitate, and succeed in calling out of hiding.

Miko, if you add me onto your year list, I will peck your eyes out!

Dragonfly 1

Dragonfly 2

Dragonfly 3

Dragonfly 4

Dragonfly 5

Dude, where's my tail?

Sonoran Spotted Whiptail

YOU DON’T NEED THE PIZZA

So I’m at Costco with my kids, just hanging out. I just ordered a pizza, and have to wait 50 minutes, so I need to kill time while they’re baking it. I’m pushing the shopping cart, aimlessly wandering around the store, trying to delay my arrival at the book section, where I will read the same back covers of the same books that I examined last week. I did the same thing, then: I ordered a pizza, and hung out inside the air-conditioned store. I could hang out outside, in the food court, where it is literally 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) It’s 105 at my house, but the concrete food court here is like a walk-in brick oven.

I see an old guy sitting on a bench. Along with clothing, computers, televisions, vacuum cleaners, camping gear, and food, Costco sells indoor and outdoor furniture. Tired customers think nothing of taking a break on whatever living room sofa or patio bench is on sale. The old guy has a terrible haircut, and has a grumpy look on his face. He is wearing shorts, so his right leg prosthesis is there for all the world to see.

Hm…missing leg…around sixty-something years old…yeah, he’s a Vietnam veteran. Bouncing Betty must have blown his leg off. Betty’s a bitch. Hey, I’ll talk with him about my book, Roadside Rest, a fictional autobiography of a female Army sergeant who loses her leg in Iraq. I’ll chat him up. Get him and his other legless friends interested. Spread the word. Get people to buy my book (It hasn’t been published yet: we’re shooting for October) via word-of-mouth. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. That’s a great idea. So I walk up to him.

“Excuse me, sir. Can I talk with you for a minute?”

“YEAH, SURE.”

“My name is Tom.”

“MY NAME IS CARL.” Carl is loud.

“Hi, Carl. May I ask you a personal question?”

“SURE.”

“How’d you lose your leg?”

“I’M DIABETIC.”

Ah, shit. He was supposed to say, “Da Nang, 1969. Mortar rounds.” Well, I don’t want to be a rude jerk, so I say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I assumed that it was a war wound. I was interested because I wrote a novel about a soldier who loses her leg in Iraq, and I was interested in whether or not you would be interested in a book like that.”

“HELL NO, I WOULDN’T BE INTERESTED IN A BOOK LIKE THAT! THERE’S ALL KINDS OF REAL PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO HAD THAT HAPPEN TO THEM. I’D RATHER READ THAT BOOK.”

I’m standing there, looking at my new friend, Carl, and thinking (but not saying out loud!) the following:

Now, Carl, you’re saying things that are causing me to doubt myself. I just spent 2 years writing this book, and now you’re telling me that no one in the universe would be interested in this story that I put a lot of time and energy into. I’m a writer, Carl. Writers are not very self-confident people. We walk around doubting and second-guessing everything we do, and every word that we write. I don’t need you to bludgeon my sensitive artist’s soul, Carl. Please don’t do that to me.

Well, I just need to thank him for his time, and leave him alone. He probably has a complex about not serving his country during the war, and I’ve reminded him of his shortcomings as a man, so I should just go away, and leave the poor soul alone.

I say, “Well, thank you for your time. I’m here with my kids…” I point at my son and daughter, who are playing inside the shopping cart. “…and we’re just browsing while we wait for our pizza that we ordered—”

Carl points at my round belly and proclaims, “YOU DON’T NEED A PIZZA!!!”

“Well, yeah…um…er…uh…it’s coming up on dinner time, and I need to feed them—”

Carl points at my kids and barks, “THEY DON’T NEED A PIZZA!!!”

Oh shit, I’m trapped. I’m stuck with a grumpy diabetic. I need to get away from Carl, and I need to get the hell away from him right now. There are certain people you want to avoid:

1. Ex-smokers. These people make fanatical terrorists look like amateurs. God help you, if you ever light a cigarette, pipe, or a cigar in front of an ex-smoker. They will start frothing at the mouth, and commence berating you for your irresponsible, selfish behavior.

2. Recovering alcoholics: See # 2, above. Exchange the word ‘pipe’ with ‘scotch on the rocks’, and see what happens.

3. Diabetics. Oy vey, they’re the worst. The worst, I tell you. Diabetics are convinced that if you don’t take their unsolicited advice—if you don’t put down that cheeseburger right now—you’re going to come down with a rabid case of diabetes in the next 24 hours. Diabetics are the ultimate diet Nazis.

Here’s the problem: I just had a full work-up. I asked my doctor to do a comprehensive check up on me. Why? Because I work in health care, I’m fat, I’m in my 40s, and I’m a flaming hypochondriac. People who work in health care are the worst hypochondriacs.

Uh oh, there’s a lump under my skin. Oh my God, it’s a tumor. I have a tumor.

Two days later when the tumor turns out to be summer heat rash, the sigh of relief can be heard across town.

What Carl doesn’t know about me is that my blood sugar is awesome, and I have the cholesterol levels of a 22 year old vegan marathon runner. My chest x-ray and abdominal ultrasound are normal.

It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s what nature gave me.  But then again, I walk the 1 mile from my house to the train station every morning, and walk home in the afternoon.  Once I get home, I take the Basset Hound for her 1 mile walk at a fast clip.  Before watching TV tonight, I swam 5 laps in our pool (it's not an olympic-sized pool, but hey, cut me some slack).

I could go on and on about this topic, but NCIS is coming on in 5 minutes, my kids are asleep, and there’s a carton of Cherry Vanilla ice cream in the freezer. I need to find that really big spoon I like to use…

MISTER POOPY PANTS

Officially, my job is to inspect hospital radiology departments. That’s what I got interviewed for. In all fairness, they did tell me that I would also go out on emergency field calls. Little did I suspect that I would find myself paying visits to the city garbage dump on a regular basis, Geiger counter in hand.


The city dump? Huh?

Well, what happens is that people go to the hospital, where they get injected by one of my former co-workers with a radioactive drug (radiopharmaceutical) for their scan, and when they go home, they don’t follow the instructions of what to do with their trash. The city picks up their garbage the next day, and when that trash truck arrives at the city dump, it passes through—and sets off—the radiation detectors.

Radiation detectors at the city dump?

That’s right, boys and girls: from California to Maine, trash trucks in this country (and others) drive through a gigantic, sensitive radiation detector when they drive in the front gate.

So the city called me, Friday.

“Hey, Tom. One of our trucks set off the alarm. Can you come check it out?”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

When I go out on a call like this, I am not expected to show up in a suit and tie—the uniform we wear when inspecting hospitals. Tennis shoes and a short-sleeved shirt are de rigueur. Hey, it’s hot out there.

So I drive out there, and whip out my $25,000 device (I’m not telling you what it is, or where you can buy one. Actually, you can’t buy one. If you tried to buy one without a permit, stern men in dark business suits and even darker sunglasses would show up, asking your neighbors questions about you.). I start walking around this radioactive garbage truck, and I’m waving it at all of the usual places where radioactive trash would be hidden inside the vehicle.

Nothing.

Hm…I don’t want to release this truck, and have it come back to bite me. What’s probably going on is the patient who went home got injected with some Technetium 99m-based radiopharmaceutical, and with Technetium’s 6 hour half-life, it decayed down to background before I got there.

But, what if I’m wrong? What if I’m not putting in enough effort to find whatever’s inside this truck? So I detached the probe from the body of the device, and started poking and prodding parts of the garbage truck that I normally ignore. I took that probe, and started vigorously inserting it into all kinds of obscene nooks and crannies. From a distance, I looked like a desperate porno star with a fetish for big trucks.

I discovered something fascinating. Something I had never thought about, before: along with all of the solid waste that goes inside garbage trucks, there is a fair amount of liquid waste. A large Coca Cola from last week’s visit to McDonalds. The half-empty jug of milk. The Coors from last night’s party. You know how at the Jack Daniel distillery they filter the raw whiskey through a gigantic barrel filled with charcoaled oak, and collect it at the bottom? Well, this liquid waste has been filtered down through old pizza, half-eaten In N’ Out double doubles, and baby Jesus’ used diapers. And it’s all sloshing around at the bottom of that garbage truck.

Well, boys and girls, my $25,000 government-issued radiation device—whose name I will not tell you—found the latch that releases all of that lovely, fermented liquid via the trap door at the bottom of that garbage truck.

I heard and unfamiliar “click”.

Then the trap door flew open.

Remember when George Clooney and John Turturo stared in awe at the flash flood that was bearing down on them at the end of “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”?

Well, that was me. My jaw dropped, and I stared, immobile, while a wall of pickled trash juice came right at me.

Self-preservation instincts took over, and I jumped away in a rather impressive flying ninja leap of death. I believe that I screamed, “Blegthuperwhoa!” at the top of my lungs while my body flew backwards.

I almost made it.

Sure, 98% of that liquid landed harmlessly in the soft dirt, in front of me. But that other 2%.

Oh, that 2%...

From the waist down, I looked and smelled like a homeless guy had vomited on me.

Did I mention that I took the train to work, that day? (I keep the Celica in the garage at work, and only use it for hospital inspections, and field calls). People on the train kept sniffing the air, and glancing around. I just sat there, my nose buried in a book about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When I got home, the Basset Hound was thrilled. She ran up to me, tail wagging a hundred miles an hour, and couldn’t stop circling and sniffing me. She said, “Wow, you smell great! Where have you been?”

Puffins!

Caveat: You should always be wary of any book or magazine with an exclamation mark in the title.

Ah...Tufted Puffins!  I have dreamt of  doing a pelagic trip to the Farallon Islands for close to 20 years.  First, I wanted to see the Great White Sharks.

Didn't see any.

So you get on a boat, and sail under the Golden Gate Bridge.

This gives you an idea of just how huge the bridge is.

Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy San Francisco morning

I was hoping that there would be Common Murres on this trip.  I saw one.

Then I saw two (the one on the right is not a Marbled Murrelet: it's a baby Common Murre).

Then there were more...

Then there were hundreds...

Then there were 170,000 of them.

Yes, these are all Common Murres who have laid their eggs on the bare cliff, and are sitting

shoulder-to-shoulder; the only way to keep Western Gulls from stealing their eggs.

Their eggs are pear-shaped, to keep from rolling off the cliff.

Western Gull

Larus occidentalis

They eat anything from McDonald's french fries to baby sea birds.

Gulls cannot drink sea water. 

Despite the name "sea gull" they have to be within one day's flight of fresh drinking water.

Then there was a Black-footed Albatross.

His wing span is 7 feet, compared to the Western Gull's, just under 5 feet.

Albatrosses use their nasal glands as a pre-kidney, enabling them to drink sea water.

...and a Right Whale Dolphin (they look like mini Right Whales)

You know, if you've seen one Blue Whale, you've seen 'em all.

Look at how small those Commmon Murres are, compared to this Humpbacked Whale

The Humback fluked, and down she went...

The Laysan Albatross wasn't nearly as cooperative as the Black-footed Albatross.

We circled back for one last attempt at finding the Northern Gannet.

No such Luck.

Oh my god, the whole island smells like bird poop.

Seriously.

The closer we got, the more intense the stench of guano was.

It was like being held hostage in a pet shop.

But I did see Tufted Puffins.  They were a life bird!

On the way back to Sausalito's harbor, a windsurfer rode our wake.