Snake School

Last year, we had a rattlesnake in back of our house.  It was April, we knew that snakes had come out of hibernation and Bud was going out with the dogs each night before bedtime.  Notice I said Bud was going out.  He always carried a powerful flashlight and turned on all our outside lights.

It's very dark around here.  Whipple Observatory, the second largest field installation of the Smithsonian is on the highest peak above town and relies on extremely clear, dark skies. So we have no streetlights in town and are committed to low light pollution.  As Bud was rounding a corner in our patio, he didn't see anything unusual, but heard a familiar rattle from his childhood.  That boy still inside him jumped back so fast, he fell over a boulder and scared Louie into running into the house to hide.

We're told to call 911 to report rattlers so we did,  and a fireman ( in a small truck ) came out dressed appropriately and carrying a long pole with "grabbers" on the end. He also had a thick wooden box.

The snake hadn't moved from his spot and was pretty lethargic, so getting hold of it and placing it in the box was an easy task (for him).  The fireman thought he was small - with a potential to give a bite that "wouldn't kill you, but could put you in the hospital," he said.

We were leaving to go back to Nova Scotia soon, so we watched the dogs extremely carefully and decided to enroll Louie our little corgi/cairn terrier in snake avoidance school this year.

Louie, Bud and I arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time.  The trainer and the rattler were already there.  As the trainer talked to us, I matter of factly said, "Obviously, the snake has no venom."
"Actually, he does, but his teeth have been filed and he wears a kind of muzzle," he tells us. " We need the dog to be able to smell the venom."

Then the shock collar went on Louie.  When the trainer tested it on the lowest setting, Louie shot up in the air, let out a blood curdling yelp and ran to hide behind me.  The woman who works at the place came over to give him a treat ( and kissed him ), telling him he was a drama queen.

And then the real drama began.  We went out back to a fenced in area and there, coiled but alert was a huge rattlesnake.  The trainer, Bud, and Louie went inside the fenced area.  Notice I said Bud and Louie went in. When Louie approached the snake for a sniff, he got shocked. I know he got another one, but I can't remember the circumstances.  I've heard that traumatized people do forget things.  Louie, by then, wanted nothing more to do with that snake.  He turned away, wouldn't look at it and tried herding Bud out of there.

I thought it was all over, training done.  Instead, the guy went over and got some secretion from the snake's anal region and then milked him for venom through the muzzle. He picked the snake up and offered it to Louie. Now Louie, like most dogs, is used to being offered treats and wonderful things from humans so he got close enough to get a good smell and got a good shock in the process. "Dogs remember things through smell," the trainer said.

I left my " huddling outside the fence" position on that administered shock and rushed inside.

Soon, the trainer, and Louie- pulling Bud with a force we've never seen in him before-came in to the building where I was standing, unable to give any comforting assurance to the couple who were nervous novices at snake school and next in line.

The trainer very professionally declared Louie a success and told us all the reasons why he did so well and that he probably wouldn't need to have a refresher course next year.

When he does need that refresher course, I'm not going.

Losing Baxter

Baxter and Fundy

Our house feels empty today.  Baxter, our magnificent fifteen year old Australian Shepherd, died yesterday. We've known that this day was coming - but still the grief is deep. Without thinking, my eyes drop down to the spots where he would always lay and when I'm in another room, I hear him stirring.

Amazing how enormous the love of an animal can be. There's such a beautiful trust and joy to it.  I treasure the moments, the trips, the laughs we had together.  He always had a great smile and a sweet way of being in the world. He was a well traveled dog - tallying up trips with us through forty-one states and six Canadian provinces. Whenever we'd arrive at our destination after many days of driving, we'd notice he wasn't around and find him back in the car, curled up in the back seat and ready to go again.

He came to us when he was nine months old. We were his third family and already had Fundy. The two dogs were six weeks apart in age and became great friends -- except for some food aggression -- requiring dinner to always be eaten in two separate rooms. They worked everything else out without our help and rollicked through life until Fundy died two and half years ago and broke our hearts.  And now it's happening again.

It's the end of an adventurous era with our Aussies. We went through our days, our clothes, our chairs, and the insides of our cars covered with dog hair. Because of them, we took long walks in the foulest of weather, searched out deserted Nova Scotia beaches where they could run, met all kinds of interesting people who stopped us on our walks, delved into homeopathy, and abandoned cross-country skiing and discovered snow shoeing because it's something you can do with dogs in the snow.

I miss their beautiful souls, the sweet smell of them, and their call to adventure. They'll  be with me always.

And one more thing, one more legacy from Baxter.  Because he grieved so deeply, and looked like he was giving up on life after Fundy died, we adopted Louie - out little corgi/cairn terrier imp.  After Louie came, Baxter regained his love of life, and in the end, relied on Louie's bark when he couldn't hear us call.  So we haven't given our clothes brushes away because now we're  covered in wirey dog hair and love.

Will we get another dog?  We don't know.  That's the thing about life, you never really know.

Nogales, Mexico Part Three

For thirty years, one family in Nogales has kept a shelter going for deportees who are deposited back in Mexico after being caught without documentation in the U.S.  Many of them are from Central America, some are indigenous people who don't even speak Spanish.

They arrive with nothing but the clothes on their backs.  They're allowed to stay just a short while in this shelter until they can figure out where to go next.

Sadly, because they feel they have no other options, they try crossing illegally again.

There's a nearly life-size crucifix in one room and the men and women have placed the plastic bands that were put on them when they were imprisoned in the U.S. for crossing illegally on the arms of Jesus.

With the Samaritans, I spent a day at the center where the deportees are fed and offered clothes and shoes since they have nothing.

The wall between the U.S. and Mexico - this photo taken at  Sasabe, Arizona.

Posters warning people not to climb the border wall and of the severe hazards of trying to cross the desert.

I'll be writing more on the Immigration issue, especially as seen from Arizona.

I'd also like to recommend several good sources.

Peg Bowden, a member of our local Samaritan group has a blog about her experiences going across to Mexico and working in the center for deportees there.  Her blog is La Frontera

Interestingly, Paul Theroux, the well known travel writer found her blog and contacted her.  He asked if he could meet her in Mexico and have her take him to the Comedor.  He wrote an article in the Sunday NYTimes titled The Country Just Over the Fence.  

And thirdly, I've been busy ( and ignoring this blog) working as the new webmaster for the 

Green Valley Samaritans. 

Nogales, Sonora, Mexico

We're back in our little bus, bumping
along on dirt roads, on city traffic circles, people watching and getting commentary from out tour leader and three Mexican women who are with us.

They're pointing out everything from Technical Colleges to corrugated  little houses with no plumbing or electricity.

Many of the houses have large black water tanks on the roof.  Trucks come to fill them  and the sun heats the water.

Lots of the temporary housing use old tires for fences, walls, or barriers.  Our guide has no idea where they get all the tires.  We see lots of back yard, and front yard gatherings like this one.

The children are beautiful - calling, "Hola" to us. Some say, "Hi" in English.


Most of them spend long hours in daycare.  Their parents work in the maquilas  - foreign owned factories.

I forgot to take pictures of them because they look like modern plants you'd see in Connecticut or Colorado.




These are three-year olds.  The center stays open from 5 A.M. till 7 P.M. Some of the parents take three busses to get to work.

At the cultural center, the groups asked Pat Watson ( a Nova Scotian from our group) to sing........

and she does!  The tour leader later tells us that we were the liveliest group ever.  We're pretty sure he meant it in a good way!

I'll write more later, there's more to share.

Going to Nogales, Mexico

A group of us went on a cross border tour  to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, sponsored by the Santa Cruz Foundation.

This picture shows us standing in Nogales, Arizona, being briefed by our tour leader before we walk across the border.

In the background going up the hill is the metal fence built by the U.S. to contain the border. Everything to the right of the fence is in Mexico.


We were a mixed group - some Samaritans, some Nova Scotians, educators, a business man.  Interestingly, a lot of us were artists.... and we were all curious to learn more about our neighbors to the south.  In years past, we'd all gone there as tourists, but now we're warned that it's unsafe, ruled by drug cartels, and told not to go.  We went in the daytime, felt perfectly safe, and learned a lot about this thriving city across our border.

                                                      Here we are on the Mexican side.

We started at a beautiful old restaurant ( and ended there -- more pictures of that, later).  That's our green bus waiting for us.

The first part of our day was in a section of town that is made up of dirt roads and shacks, in no real order, in a very hilly part of the city.  Newly arrived people from southern Mexico are coming to this part of town, claiming a piece of land and building on it.  Many have no utilities.  There is a lot of work available in Nogales, so people are flocking there. The government and organizations are trying to provide day care, after school, and recreational centers. We had to climb over trenches and up narrow steps to get to some of them.

 There were lots of dogs and wire loosely strung in the section that had utilities

An overview of this section of town.  Everywhere we went, the people were welcoming and a pleasure to be with. There was much more to this trip.  I'll continue showing it in my next blog.