Wildlife Up Close

Once again, the abundance of wildlife in Big Bend National Park does not take long to make itself known. Although in the few days we have been here, we have not seen a bear, coyote or mountain lion, we are not without creatures to view.

It is the breeding season for tarantulas, The brown hairy males the size of one's fist march across roadways as they search for mates. They are large enough to be seen by alert drivers, so not all that many are spider roadkill.

Of more immediate interest to Jane and me though, are the mice. We do not have to leave our apartment to enjoy them. Well, 'enjoy' is not exactly the best choice of words.

Jane was ready to turn around and head back to Ohio when we unlocked the apartment at Building A644B, our assigned housing for our three months of volunteer duty. We were greeted by a living room/kitchen/dining area, bedroom and bath thick with months-long accumulation of spider webs, dead bugs, desert dust and desert mouse droppings. We could not light the LP gas range nor the water heater. The toilet had no water in tank or bowl and both were crusty with the flaky remains of the dissolved solids that are characteristic of the unfiltered water that comes from Big Bend Park wells.

Those of you who know Jane realize that though she was not given a middle name at birth, she has adopted one, "Tidy." By the second day of our residence, she was showing a much lower level of stress and the apartment was beginning to look like we might be able to live here for a while. My polite but uncompromising complaining to the Park's Chief of Administration about our residency not having been anticipated was met with sincere apology and the promise to remedy the gas/plumbing problems immediately. He was a man of his word and before we got back to the apartment four hours later, we had hot water and a toilet that worked.

Jane's next priority was the wildlife which were way too up-close and personal. She quickly laid aside her 'observe but do not molest' demeanor and set out a trap line for the residential rodents. Three days later, the Deer Mouse local population is down by three. They apparently scampered into the closet where they were all caught, but the hole that leads to the crawl space below the apartment is large enough to accommodate their travel by a tiny Tonka Truck.

Today I have been assigned the job of finding materials at the Maintenance Building to patch the passage-way from crawl space to closet. I intend to take the responsibility quite seriously since the Trans Pecos Rat Snake we have living under our porch may decide that his hunting ground would be as fruitful inside as out.