Monsoon, Haboob and Gila monster!  Oh my!

Hope you all had a great 4th.  All fireworks were canceled in our area due to the extreme fire danger and the fact that several wildfires were still burning.  That did not stop us from having a fantastic light show.  Mother Nature stepped in and gave us the best lightning, thunder and rain we have had in months.  And she hasn't stopped yet.  Yesterday we had another even more fantastic storm that had all the dogs hiding under the beds and all the rest of us covering our ears and moving away from the windows.  We had rain that caused a white out and flash floods.  We even had hail and hurricane force winds.

In Phoenix there was a "haboob".  That is a huge dust storm that was 30 miles wide and thousands of feet in the air.  If you ever saw the movie, "The Mummy", it looked like the dust storm in that movie.  I thought we were going to have one of those here tonight.  I could see lots of dust and sand over Tucson this evening.  We also had thunderstorms again but nothing like yesterday and the 4th.  I suspect we may get more rain during the night.  Clouds were building south of us again as it got dark.

Saturday night Buddy started his snake alarm bark again.  I went out and he was dancing around the stump of the old pomegranate tree.  I could see a head close to the ground that jumped at him a few times.  I yelled at Steve, "I think we have another snake!"  I then went toward Buddy and told him to "Leave It!"  which is a command to help keep him safe.  Of course, he doesn't want to obey immediately.  Looking down I realized that there was no snake this time.  It was a 6 inch Gila Monster.  Steve got the shovel instead of the gun and we put the monster in a bucket.  It was hissing and jumping at us the whole time and I already knew they are also poisonous so we didn't take any chances.  I wanted the grandkids to see it though.  So we kept it overnight and showed all the kids the next day.  We discovered from our reptile book that we had a rare banded gila monster instead of a usual randomly spotted one.  We also discovered that they are all protected and endangered.  Steve called the Desert Museum to see if they wanted the monster.  They said they do not take animals.  So after everyone got a chance to look at him we released him in the wash at the bottom of our hill.  I hope he lives long and prospers.


The crickets are everywhere.  There is no place to go where you cannot hear their chirping and it goes on all night.  I killed several in our bedroom last night but managed to miss one.  I did manage to sleep in spite of the racket.  We searched and found more of the pests tonight but I haven't heard the one in our room yet.  Maybe he moved out!  Praise the Lord for small miracles! Ha!