Taking a break from weed eating, I laid down next to my UNIT crane to watch some spectacular clouds flow past high above me. One minute I’m hot and uncomfortable in the direct heat, the next moment the clouds covering the sun made me wish for a sweater. Hearing the cry of a Red-tailed Hawk, I get on one elbow to shade my eyes to spot him. He sounded close by. Indeed, he was just to my left maybe sixty feet above me. He was making his unique call because he was pissed. My two ravens, Heckle and Jeckle, were harassing him out of their ‘zone’.

As I watched, more and more ravens arrived to assist in running the hawk off. Taking turns nipping at his tail, and coming in like Me 109’s on a B-17 bomber, the hawk was impotent to stop them. His only recourse was to go for altitude. Swinging in large circles while evading the irritating ravens. he was soon a speck in the sky. As the hawk reached a certain height, the ravens flew off at high speed in every direction. Once the speck disappeared, my ravens were back in their oak tree happy as clams. It dawned on me suddenly that both species had tactics. At the lower altitudes the ravens ruled. Once the hawk achieved a superior height where his larger wings could sustain flight easier for him then the smaller winged ravens, he could dive at will on them. Well aware of this fact, the ravens hid. Sweet!

I’m filling my Power Wagon with boulders from Spring Canyon one sunny day. It’s hot, and I took a break from rolling the larger stones up a plank into my flatbed. Taking a seat under the shade of a large juniper, some movement across the narrow dry wash catches my eye. It was a large black tarantula doing battle with a large black hornet with bright red wings. As the large spider tried to maneuver away, the hornet or wasp would checkmate him from escaping. Ultimately the flying insect using only his legs to avoid the spiders mandibles and stinger accomplished his mission. To get underneath the spider to deliver a couple of stings to a weak spot in its abdomen thus disabling it. The wasp then started dragging the spider across the sand and pebbles to a hole about five feet away. It then disappeared into the abandoned gopher hole dragging the now curled up spider behind it.

I do some research on this flying insect. Its local name is, ‘Tarantula Hawk’. N.A.S.A. and other scientists have a lot of interest in this insect too. One thing that has them studying it is the reaction the hawks sting has on the spider. The venom doesn’t kill the arachnid. It just puts it into suspended animation. The hawk then lays its eggs onto the dormant spider for its young to feast on when the larvae hatch. If for some reason the eggs don’t hatch, Mr. Tarantula comes out of his torpid state, sometimes months later, no worse for the wear to go about his business. A neat thing to pull off this suspended animation with no side effects. Especially for space travel or putting someone on ice until a cure is found for a medical condition. I could see using it on Halloween. You dress up in a giant wasp outfit and nail the exwife as she answers the door. Wake her up when the kids are 19.

While rolling giant boulders off of hillsides off of Soledad Canyon, a favorite pastime as a kid, it takes four of my pals and myself to work a fifty ton job loose to start its slow roll, then pick up speed bouncing to the wide dry creek bed about a quarter mile below us. It was almost ready to go all on its own from erosion, so we just had to help it along a bit. As it finally leans past the point of no return to juggernaut down the steep hillside, a movement underneath has us all aghast. Forgetting to watch the boulders descent, we all stared at part of an exposed tunnel as the rock went over and down. For just the blink of an eye, a black carapace about the size of a bowling ball shot past the opening and down the same tunnel into the hill behind us. We were astonished. What was it? We all agreed it looked armored. It was so fast shooting out of the bright sunlight we didn’t get much of a look at it. It wasn’t a mammal. More like some sort of giant insect? Never saw its like since.

Rattlesnakes… I’ve never seen one over six foot, ever. Seen photos of twelve footers in Texas and such. Not around where I’ve hiked and hung out. We do have the Mojave Green, though. Its venom is about five times more potent then the Pacific Coast Rattler or the sidewinders. The big black desert rattlers don’t get long, but they can sure get fat. Seen them twelve inches around in their middles plenty of times and that’s without a fresh kill inside of them. We once came upon a big rattler trying to swallow a large jackrabbit. The rabbit was hung up going down for some reason. This snake had his jaws so stretched, his eyes were flat and wide open. He kept staring at us as he tried to get the rabbit down and get away at the same time. We watched him from some rocks it was so fascinating. He finally disgorged it and crawled off for a smaller banquet.

As far as rattles go, the most I’ve counted is fourteen. I read in a book that captive rattlers grow up to 20 rattles. It’s because they don’t move around much getting fed in their enclosures. In the wild they break off when they get too long and start anew.

Lots of people think that a rattle snake bite isn’t that deadly with serums and such. Not so. I’ve seen many an old rattle snake wound, starting on my own Uncle Curly’s hand, to the idiot ‘Snake Whisperer’ moron in front of the Agua Dulce hardware store. THEY NEVER HEAL. Nope. Every year my uncle would have to put up with the wound on the back of his hand sloughing off skin like a bad sun burn and having tremendous pains come and go constantly. Ditto for the snake handler. He’s gone from 310 pounds to 175. He also has a sunken wound in his chest that has skin paper thin where it keeps trying to patch the venom holes. No dice. You can see his blood coursing through the veins the skin is so thin and taut.

One of our best true life adventures was when my sons Ty and Noah were little. We used to pick the night of a full moon on a hot summer evening to go on black widow hunts. We had so many in our rock walls it was ridiculous. Taking flashlights and cans of spray ‘raid’, we all ways tried to get a new record on kills. I think one night we bumped off over 300. On one such night we witness a battle between an exceptionally large black widow and a big Jerusalem bug. You know, the big armored ‘potato bugs’ that are orange and black striped. Out of her nest in the crevice of two large wall stones, she wanted this bug big time. It was the first time I realized that some spiders can spin strands of sticky web from the ends of their legs. Illuminating the battle with our flashlights, it went on so long we sent Ty to the house for some Cokes.

Lassoing the big beetle like a cowboy would an errant steer, the spider would then race to a twig or small stone to tie up one of the bugs six legs. Then the spider would lasso another leg to try and repeat the process. In between the beetle was like a mini tank. Breaking the bonds it would try and get free. Nope, that spider would not quit. Finally the bug got tired. Lassoing three of its legs, the black widow raced in and delivered a killing bite to a point between its carapace and thorax. Adios beetle. We all acknowledged her victory. Just before we spayed the crap out of her…

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, Dave Baral, went in with me to buy some calves from Lev Arklin at his ranch next to Big Rock Creek. Out of the bunch, I picked the Longhorn with the spots and attitude. Only about eighty pounds, they were still a handful. Just before loading them for transport, naturally, mine makes a break for it. Before catching it, a couple of guys at the ranch had it in their minds to just shoot the little prick. Some pretty good shots missed him four times. He ended up trotting back to his pals. I named him Lucky. Once a prick, always a prick has been my experience with troublemakers. Lucky filled that bill. He hated dogs. As he grew larger, he was able to kick a dog farther and farther. Steers can kick sideways, different from a horse. Dogs that have been used to hassling horses, find this out the hard way. He once nailed a Doberman so hard, it did two full somersaults before hitting the side of the barn…When the dog jumped up, Lucky was on top of him like Dempsey would do, nailing him with his head as the dog staggered up. Good thing for the dog he didn’t have horns yet. He literally knocked the crap out of that dog. It had lost it in midair and its own launched bowels sprayed across my freshly painted barn in an odd pattern. Dots and dashs of dog crap. It was almost as bad as the time my Bullmastiff, Dozer, nailed me with coyote waste. Dozer had him by the stomach and was shaking the coyote like it was a doll. As I ran up with a garden hose to break it up, one shake gave me a shot out ot that coyotes ass that hit me so hard and fast, I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. The spray started around my navel on my sweatshirt, then, caught me evenly all the way up to my forehead. Yep, in the mouth and one of my eyes…Lucky ends up at the Haunted Ranch, a few miles away, up a canyon with a spring that bubbles out of the ground. A rare thing in Acton. The spring is how we used to scare tourists. A friend used to give trail rides from her dude ranch in Aqua Dulce to city folks. Sometimes I would lead one. Being a kid, I would make all sorts of stuff up to make the ride more fun. I changed my stories all the time, but, the gist of it is, the horses wouldn’t go up the canyon because of all the bees covering that spring well head. There was a pipe feeding from it down to a small pond, so, the horses could water there. If you headed one up into the tight canyon, the bees would attack. All of my friend’s horses knew all about those bees, so, after one of my ‘they were all murdered’ type tales, I would add, “Go on ahead if you think I’m lying. Even the horses are spooked of what hides up there!” I would then take the closest cute girl’s halter and start to lead her horse on to the trail. The horse would toss me loose and get wild eyed, every time. It’s also why I was fired. Anyhow, the steers all loved it up there just below the spring. They grew tall and wide. Of all of them, Lucky had the horns. About forty inches wide and hooked on the ends. With Longhorns, the females have the wider rack. They bunch the calves in a circle, then put their rear ends against them, facing whatever threatens them head to head with the other cows. The bulls? Their horns are for one thing only. Killing anything that pisses them off. Longhorns fight for keeps. Especially in mating season. Their horns are stocky and hooked. Pointed on the ends. Just like the ones Lucky grew…Its time to take them to the butchers. A good butcher will quarter it, then, take a quarter for his services. You’ll have so many steaks, rips, roasts and hamburger, you won’t miss it, take my word for it. The guts alone will fill a Toyota pickup bed. Amazingly enough, coyotes and ravens can clear a pile you thought was huge in about a week. Or, backhoe and fill over. I say let the animals get a break. Lucky and his pals were going to another place to be bumped off, so, Baral hired some cowboys to load them onto a trailer for their last ride. I went along to say goodbye to Lucky. He didn’t like me after the ball removal ordeal, another story, but, he loved Leo. Leo would ride him all the time. These men who had chased him into a rounded steel pen of round rails, he didn’t like at all. Not having horses didn’t help. Also, they brought a long horse trailer for transport. Not a ‘stock’ trailer. A big mistake. Getting Lucky into the trailer was amazingly easy. He ran right in. As one of the cowboys went to swing the horse trailer door shut, Lucky did a buck into the air since the ceiling was for horses heads, spun in mid air, then, Lucky put it into gear with his head down as soon as his hoofs hit the trailer deck. As the man tried to latch the door, Lucky punched his head into it at about seventy miles an hour. It took the door right into the man, knocking him cold as it flung him backwards into the steel railings. From his straight shot out of the trailer, Lucky took leaping bounds straight for the steel railings. Putting down his head at the last second, his horns went in the gap between rails. His momentum and power, took him right through, bending the rails like they were copper. Now outside of the round pen, Lucky leaped, twisted and turned like he had an invisible rider on him, then took off in the thick brush. Nothing but the Sierra Pelonas, then Yosemite ahead of him. He did it. He got away! He sure lived up to his name…

My Uncle Wimpy is on deck of a big LST Naval supply ship, looking through some big binoculars at their next port of call, Tininan atoll. Like some gigantic jaw of a prehistoric monster, Tinian was a monstrous volcano that had shot up off the ocean floor, blew its top off, and left a perfect five mile around cove for ships to hide from storms in. Since the inside of the rocky bowl had only a tiny stretch of beach, all incoming vessels dropped anchor at the far reaches, then, worked their way to empty piers to unload as their turn came. Now, Naval vessels aren’t cabin cruisers. In the blasting hot Pacific sun, anything you touch, burns the skin. No leaning on a railing for a quick butt. Burn a hole right into your arm. My Uncle Wimpy was on board to put into place a new unloading proceedure the Navy had sent him to school for. Having already fought in WW1, he had been running drydocks for Battlewagons…So what if it was a supply ship. He was back in the fight. He was already half-deaf from decades of twelve inch and sixteen inch guns going off, so, it was the best he could pull off. Now, as they slowed to enter the protected anchorage, my Uncle looked down and noticed how the water changed abruptly as the big ship left the black of the deep ocean, into the sandy bottom of the old volcano cone. You could see clear to the bottom in the light blue, crystal clear water. All the sunken Jap ships we wasted taking the place, were marked with bobbing warning bouys. He said there were a lot of ’em to circumvent, so, they didn’t drop anchor until past midday. Now, as the ships ahead of you unloaded, you moved closer to the docks until your turn came. My Uncle set up these giant rolling racks and went to work unloading medical supplies, food crates, water tanks, all sorts of stuff. After this was accomplished, you moved your now empty vessel farther out to the smaller docks to fill up with ballast water to bring your deck lower, plus, await new orders. Unloaded, the ship was sitting about twenty five feet higher. Sailors off duty, especially the on board Marine guards all Naval ships have on board, took to diving off the stern. No one cared until a man hurt his neck and the captain forbid any more nonsense. It was back to waiting for shore leave. Drinking warm beer and playing some baseball. Better then the ship and the constant heat. These ships are all steel. Forget comfort. Even the officers sweated, but they sweated like gentlemen. The bellbottom Navymans’ pants were designed for them to be rolled up for scrapping paint and swabbing the decks. Not for a fashion statement. Once my Uncle’s duties were over, he pretty much had nothing to do, so, he did what all enlisted men do in such a circumstance. He avoided officers and gambled a lot in lower areas of the vast holds. Prior to leaving the harbor, my Uncle was up top, with about ten other sailors, kibitzing with some off-duty marines who were shirtless, and fishing off the stern. One of the marines, fresh off duty, snuck the men some warm bottled beer. A no-no, but, drink it fast and toss the evidence over the side. As one bottle flew after another, one of the marines said almost under his breath, “Man, that looks just like a giant floating eye!” He then pointed at what he was looking at. The other men took a look, shading their eyes with their caps. Another man tossed an empty bottle in the direction they were all looking while telling them they had heat stroke. As the bottle hit the water, in the blink of an eye, they all saw it at the same time. It was now crimson red, and, it was sort of fluttering under the water, closer to them. It was indeed an eye. But now, it wasn’t hidden by the creatures ability to camouflage. From a light blue, it was now an angry red. Maybe twenty foot below the surface, it now floated up a bit and towards the men, even closer. Its torso was HUGE. As the big ship swung at anchor, so did the creature. Now, the end of its torso was hidden by the black of the open sea, then, it would swing back into sight as the ship swung with the current. The eye looked to be twice the size of a dinner plate. It stared at the men from about ten foot under water at one point. It stared back with intelligence. Suddenly, it shot out the what looked to be, short, stubby tentacles from just in front of that eye, out in front of it, making them go completely under the hull of the ship. The two whips went even farther. It was a giant squid. But not like any sort the men had heard of, even in tall tails. This ones body was massive, like a truck my Uncle said, and the whips had to of shot out over a hundred feet, easy. As a meal horn sounded, the beast suddenly shot backwards into the black of the deep ocean. So quick, they all stared at each other in amazement…No one took sneak swims after that…

When pissed, the first thing a chimp does it go for your eyes. This way, he can then rip your genitals off, bite off your fingers, and break a couple of things, while you stagger around blind. My Uncle Melvin (Melvin Koontz, owned a trained original M.G.M. lion) bunked with me for almost a year while he slowly lost a medical battle. I used to drive him to the Veterans’ hospital on my learners permit in my mom’s giant 1952 Olds. He used to reach his foot over and stomp it on mine, while yelling, “COME ON, WHILE WE’RE YOUNG!” He had stories for every scar and hole in his body. Through him, I got the job feeding the big cats for Ted Derby, way up in Soledad Cyn. Anyhow, Uncle Melvin told me about this dog, his brother, my Uncle Wimpy, had, that was really something. Seems this Irish Terrier named Spinner (for always chasing its’ stub tail) sort of made pals with Jackie, the M.G.M. lion… Oh, Jackie was the name my Uncle gave him; the studio called him something else…As a young pup, Spinner played with infant chimps at a circus wintering town growing up, so was a real hard ass with a heart ten times the size of his chest. One day, he got into a big top training cage while Jackie was getting a work out for some cameramen from publicity. He would dance in and out, nipping Jackie, but not really biting. Screwing around. Jackie picked up on it. Jackie also timed him and did a quick spin, nailing Spinner in mid-leap with one of his giant paws. Spinner hit the bars like a big rubber ball, ringing the cage like a bell, then bounced at an odd angle into some raked hay in the urine ring all training cages have. Jackie turned to go back to business. Spinner comes out of the hay and nails Jackie with his terrier teeth, right in his big brown mane. My Uncle said it was so funny, seeing that dog hanging off the lions face that way, all the trainers came to see what all the laughing was about. The lion finally caught him with a paw and dragged him off, growling the entire time. Jackie never put his claws out. That’s why the dog was never really hurt. My Uncle told me it was really something to see. Too bad Spinner also chased cars…An animal that made my Uncle a lot of dough was his trick Zebra. The clowns used it a lot since it had a good temperment, most of the time. For money, my Uncle would bet his Zebra could kick a two foot two by four, three in a row. With money down, that Zebra would kick sideways as my Uncle tossed it and make it spin for a hundred foot or more. Now, lots of people think the lion is the King of the beasts. I’d say the King Cobra. Even elephants walk around them. Even in the world of big cats, maybe third. In a fight between a Tiger and a Lion, it usually goes to the Tiger. Tigers are solitary. Lions live in prides. Lions have pecking orders, so, will fight to a point, then back off. Not Tigers. It’s always manno de manno. Plus, Tigers carry more weight then Lions. But, that’s another factor making the top dog in the cat world the Leopard. Uncle Melvin slept in the same bed with his favorite big cat. He got tossed out of Glendale for it reaching through the backdoor milkman slot for the milkman’s hand. Every big cat slugfest between a big Leopard and another big cat, ended up with the Leopard cleaning the other cat’s blood off its’ fur. Too FAST. Too AGILE. Half the bulk but twice the power. The only other mammal to put some money on is the Grizzily bear. A member of the pig family, under that thick, matted coat is a body of gristle and muscle, going ten foot on its’ hind legs and coming into the ring at 1100 pounds. If out of control, a bear won’t back off from ANYTHING. Oh, its to the death? A Grizzily will accommodate. One animal no one ever, ever, ever trained. A Wolverine. A Wolverine regularly chases bears off their kills. Wolves hate them for the same reason. Wolverines will go psycho and glory in the fight, screw the meat…Now, of all his animals, Uncle Melvin loved his Giraffes the best. I once asked him why he didn’t take his Giraffes into the pond to wash them like the elephants. He told me they would tip over and drown. Too top heavy. I thought he was joking. He told me to watch them drink. They would splay their legs out as wide as they could, then streeeetttcchhh their long tongues to the water…He also told me camels pissed backwards. I found out he was right about that the hard way…