Last week I mentioned I saw a tarantula crossing the road. (There's a joke there somewhere, see if you can find it.) Two nights ago, around midnight, I had the front door open to entice cooler air into the trailer after a heavy downpour. I heard footsteps crunching in the gravel outside. I thought, who would be out on the gravel at this time of night? Some creepy neighbor, perhaps? I peered out the window and saw a shadowy creature moving between the trailers. Hmm, I thought, is that a dog? As the animal moved slowly across the path by the front porch, I saw the unmistakable outline of a javelina strolling next to the neighbor's carport.
This monsoon is apparently already one for the record books. We have received over five inches of rain since June 15; monsoon officially ends September 30. These almost-daily thunderstorms are unsettling. As long as the metal roofs and awnings hold, we'll be okay, but the clamor of wind, rain, and thunder is deafening. I keep dreaming a freight train is coming through the living room.
Up till now, I've learned to keep the blinds drawn to ward off the desert sun. My mole-like eyes are adapting to life in gloomy shadows. Today's gloom, however, was because of an enormous rain cloud sitting over much of southern Arizona. This cloud emitted a purposeful drenching downpour from a pure white sky. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I'm used to that sort of sky. It's the kind of sky that makes you think, Wow, the mothership is squatting over me, dumping buckets with no end in sight—guess I'll stay indoors today. I have the local NWS radar bookmarked in my browser. I check it more often than I check email. Today, on the radar, a huge solid splat of green obliterated Tucson. There it sat, for hours.
The desert mantra is turnaround, don't drown. Some roads in outlying areas cross normally dry washes. During and after rainstorms, those washes fill up with fast-moving water, which flows through various channels toward the Rillito River, which flows west to the Santa Cruz River. Almost the entire state of Arizona has been under a flash flood warning for a few days. After particularly violent storms, my phone lights up with obnoxious emergency alerts, day or night.
This morning I checked the radar and during a lull, I walked over to see how the Rillito River was doing. Meaning, how much water was flowing along its wide tree-filled channel. I saw more water than I did the last time I looked a couple days ago but not close to full. The sound of the rushing water was eerie, though. The water is the color of milk chocolate, that cruddy stuff you eat only if you can't get ahold of any 85%+ cacao. Medicinal chocolate, yum. I don't buy chocolate of any kind, because I can't eat only one square—I'm an all-or-nothing kind of chocolate eater.
Anyway, the floodwater is an unappetizing brown, but that's not the memorable part. That water moves fast. It is not fooling around. It would transport you into the next county before you could catch a breath. It would probably take your car too, if you were stupid enough to drive through one of those washes. Which apparently drivers do quite frequently. I saw it happen in Oregon, too. There's some sort of magnetic attraction between Jeeps and mudpuddles. I once saw two teen girls weeping in a Jeep that they had managed to mire in a mudpuddle to the top of their big-ass off-road wheels. I'm guessing the hankering to drive your vehicle through fast-moving floodwater is probably similar to a jaywalking compulsion. Sometimes you just gotta do it.
Back to my nocturnal visitor. I read up on javelinas and learned that they tend to travel in small packs. The one I saw seemed to be alone, although in the dark, I could not be sure. It crossed in front of the trailer. I grabbed my little flashlight and stepped warily out onto the side deck, keeping close to the back door in case the critter should decide to mince up the steps on its cloven hooves and come at me with its tusks.
That desert creature couldn't have cared less about me. It was busy nibbling on little succulents and green weeds that have sprung up in the gravel. I remembered reading that javelinas have a keen sense of smell but their eyesight is poor. I shone the flashlight on it and saw small red eyes peer in my direction. I was clearly of no interest whatsoever. I got the feeling I had perhaps met the real manager of the trailer park.
