In the 1950s, the Trailways bus station in Flagstaff was housed in the railroad depot. Many nights, I sat in a cafe across the street, drinking coffee with my buddies and talking about our dreams of the future.

If black people got off the Trailways bus and started toward the cafe, the proprietress met them at the door. She told them she couldn’t serve them.

The African-Americans did not act surprised, or outraged. They were refused service all across America. Many of us sensed that it was wrong, but accepted it as the way of the world–bigotry by default.

A black person needed to carry his food with him when he traveled. He also could not rent a hotel room, except in cities large enough to support black-only hotels. That discrimination was ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also known as the Voting Rights Act.

Now there’s a Senate candidate in Kentucky, Rand Paul, who thinks the Civil Rights Act should have excluded private businesses which wanted to discriminate against people of color.

Whatever your politics, you’ll probably agree with me that lately, the world has been getting crazier faster. Your definition of “crazier” may be different than mine, and that’s fine. This is America–so far.

During my years as a journalist, I reported on the movements of the time as they came along: the civil rights movement, the protest against the Vietnam war, the women’s movement. Things moved more slowly then, but they tended to move forward.

I was optimistic, but I also was naive. It didn’t take long to realize that whatever gains are made, new bigots are spawned every day. We are all born ignorant. Some of us try to get over it, and others pass it on to their children.

Furthermore, the idea of freedom scared the living hell out of some conservative Americans and their institutions. At this moment, educators in Texas are trying to rewrite school history books to represent a conservative bias.

I believe that I wrote the first serious article about women’s liberation in Arizona. I didn’t intend for it to be serious, but an organizer for the women’s movement made so much sense that she didn’t leave me room to be snide. Those were the days when women mentioned in news articles were not allowed first names; a woman was identified as “Mrs. John Somuch.”

The organized warned me that I would receive more complaints from women than from men. She was right. The housewives of Mesa were furious. I had challenged their traditional roles. But over the years, I watched several traditional women demand equality, fight for it, accept it as their due.

I came to understand that there are always people and institutions that would drag us back into the Nineteenth Century.The coal industry has come close.

There are people in Congress who bang on their high chairs in front of CNN cameras every time someone suggests governance that does not favor their favorite contributing industry. Some of these guys can’t even have a civil discourse with themselves.

Any measure that suggests a more beneficial relationship between a taxpayer and his government is called “socialism,” and in some cases it is. Social Security sure isn’t classic capitalism. That would be British Petroleum.

Despite ourselves, we have come a long way since 1964. In general, more people are more equal than they used to be. The knuckle-draggers have slowed progress, but they haven’t stopped it.

So now we have a candidate for the U.S. Senate who thinks the Voting Rights Act of 1964 went too far. It would be easy to ignore him, but I suspect he has a lot of friends out there. Still.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

Long-time friend Steve Auslander of Tucson wrote, “I wonder whether being an official state liar means the lies one tells are official lies. If it is so, then should not the lie bear some official status, such as a stamp declaring that the lie is official?”

This is what our design staff came up with:

Steve wrote a learned discourse on obfuscation, prevarication, equivocation, and the body waste of male cattle. We only have room to repeat the flattering part:

“I must say I am a big fan and am certain that in time your efforts will be recognized, even extolled, as developing an entire academic discipline, as developing an intellectual paradigm, a cosmic shift of cross-discipline study that will bear enormous fruit. Then doctoral graduates of Factual Diversity will fructify the land with wise counsel.”

That’s what we’re striving for, from multiple platforms.

Spinning the Roundabout: My brother Dean, who lives in Glendale, e-mailed the Arizona Department of Transportation about a mound of earth in the middle of a new roundabout. The roundabout lets drivers escape the U.S. 93 bypass and enter downtown Wickenburg.

Dean’s e-mail: “The roundabout on the east end of the U.S. 93 bypass at Wickenburg has a dangerous design flaw. The mound in the center of the roundabout prevents traffic entering from the west on U.S. 60 from seeing incoming traffic on U.S. 93, making it nearly impossible to merge safely, particularly since the U.S. 93 traffic is moving rapidly.”

ADOT’s response: “The mound in the center of the roundabout is designed to block entering traffic from seeing oncoming traffic, while allowing enough sight distance for drivers to determine an acceptable gap in traffic to enter the intersection.

“This mound helps to reduce speeds at the roundabout and provide greater intersection visibility to drivers as they approach the intersection. Roundabouts without center island mounding or other sight obstructions have experienced issues with motorists driving thru the intersection without slowing down because they focus their attention to the road beyond the intersection and not notice the intersection.”

Jacking up the fish: Friends Dick Thomas of Phoenix and Marti Fischer of Scottsdale, acting independently, sent this story:

“I finally got around to going fishing this morning, but after a while, I ran out of worms.

“Then I saw a cottonmouth with a frog in his mouth, and frogs are good bass bait. Knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the frog in his mouth, I grabbed him right behind the head, took the frog and put it in my bait bucket.

“Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a little whiskey in its mouth. His eyes rolled back, he went limp, I released him into the lake without incident, and carried on my fishing, using the frog.

“A little later, I felt a nudge on my foot.

“There was that same snake with two frogs in his mouth.”

That gave me the idea of using Jack Daniels as bait to catch sand trout. They swim through the sand of the dry Hassayampa River, just as other trout swim through water.

I’ve been using water for bait, but Jack Daniels, seeping through the sand, might attract more fish. I’ll let you know.

The tsunami set off by the earthquake in Chile didn’t do much damage around the Pacific Rim, but it did cause a river surge in the Hassayampa.

A wave of sand half a meter high surged out of the Gila River near Arlington and rolled up the Hassayampa as far as Morristown, smashing against seven million acres of tumbleweeds.

We don’t have many big events like that around here. And yet we live by the weather, or lack of it. As we see reports of blizzards and flooding elsewhere in the country, and catastrophes worldwide, we feel ever more grateful to live here. Miss Ellie, a northern California girl, says she doesn’t miss the earthquakes and mudslides. Mudslides are rare in Arizona, and very dusty.

We did have heavy storms off the Pacific about a month ago. We measured more than five inches of rain here at the institute, which qualifies as a weather phenomenon. The Hassayampa got all wet.

Now, vast stretches of desert are emerald green, and we figure the rain sets us up for a spectacular season of desert wildflowers, starting any day.

As a matter of fact, I was out looking for early wildflowers the other day, which is why I know about the river surge in the Hassayampa. I was alongside the river, just north of Buckeye, when the sand began rippling back out toward the Sea of Cortez.

Frankly, I was lost. That also was because of the recent storms. The rain stirred up the boogie bushes (Meanderous adios), which move from place to place on a whim, looking for wetter places to extend their shallow roots.

I thought I was driving north on Vulture Mine Road. But a big boogie bush that I use as a landmark had moved across the road from west to east, nudging up alongside a damp wash.

My subconscious, acting out of habit, told me that if that bush was on my left, I must be driving north. (The Arizona Woolgatherers Association meets here Wednesdays.)

I didn’t realize my error until I was almost to Buckeye. That’s when the wave of sand rippled past, also heading south.

Desert wildflowers should get a big boost from saguaros this spring. As you know, a saguaro is basically a water-storage machine. Its accordion-pleated hide allows it to expand and suck up water, as much as 200 gallons from a single storm.

After the recent storms, some of the saguaros found they had taken on too much water. They’ve been squirting water out of their “ears,” the holes left by woodpeckers and butcher birds.

When I was driving the wrong way on Vulture Mine Road, I saw a couple of saguaros that looked like they were having a water fight.

All that sprinkling can’t help but promote wildflowerism. I’m going back there in a few days to see if the cacti have raised a garden of gold poppies.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

I came home from our winter tour of Lapland with terrible respiratory problems. The staff in the emergency room here in  Wickenburg couldn’t believe that I got sick while being chased by wolves.

Now, as I sit here hacking and coughing and blowing permafrost out  my ears, I know that the trip was worth it.

I always wanted to see Lapland. It started in the fourth grade, when I saw photographs in geography books of the native people posing stiffly beside their reindeer.

Engineers from the Wickenburg Institute for Factual Diversity had to go to Lapland to road-test the new Hyundai Hypothesis. Miss Ellie and I went along.

The Hypothesis, a mid-sized SUV, is designed to run on a fuel that hasn’t yet been invented. Attempts to turn permafrost into fuel are not promising, but we needed to test the vehicle under arctic conditions. 

Since the Hypothesis engine is still a theory, we borrowed the engine from a Hyundai Tucson. We used the same powerplant to test the Hypothesis on the harsh deserts of southwestern Arizona last July. For the Lapland tests, we had to install four-wheel-drive skis.

You probably remember from grade school that Lapland is a blanket name for a region that spreads from Russia across Finland, Sweden and Norway. (Blankets are recommended). But to confuse me, Finland has an actual political subdivision called Lapland, a province squeezed between Russia and Sweden.

The indigenous people of Lapland do not like to be called “Laps” or “Lapps.”  That’s like calling an Apache a “Redskin.”

The natives of Lapland are Sami people, the oldest indigenous culture  in northern Europe, and a rich culture it is. They do Sami dancing, not Lap dancing.

Some Samis still herd reindeer, but others are right up-town, working in mills, electronics factories, banks and bistros. One morning when it was 76 degrees below zero, we saw a man walking down the street on snowshoes, carrying one of those little red ”designer” laptops. The computer turned blue in the cold.

We were never out of sight of tourists. Apparently, a lot of people share my curiosity.

We hired a Sami support crew, with their reindeer, their sled dogs, their snowmobiles. From our base in Enari, Finland, our little caravan headed into the wilderness, going east toward Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Only the tops of trees were poking out through the snow, which must have been twelve feet deep.

We were not far out of Murmansk when the Hypothesis quit cold. No one could figure out why. It’s the kind of thing your car will do when there’s no mechanic around. But we had a factory-trained Sami mechanic with us. His best guess was that gasoline was retreating to its nice warm tank, refusing to go meet the fuel injectors. Samis employ a good deal of mysticism to explain life. 

We put a sled under each corner of the Hypothesis, and  hitched up twenty reindeer to pull it. Miss Ellie had always had a secret wish to drive sled dogs, so the Samis fixed her up with a team. I followed along on a Finnish kicksled powered by one big reindeer.

We traveled rather slowly and sedately, until the bears came at us. There must have been a dozen of those big critters. They were grizzlies of the 800-pound kind, and they looked hungry.

We whipped up the reindeer and the sled dogs, and sped back toward Finland. The bears were gaining on us. Riding out there alone on my kicksled, I thought I was sure to be devoured. I could feel one big bear’s breath on my neck. He grabbed the scarf off my neck, which is probably why I have bronchitis. 

Then we heard the wolves. There must have been 40 of them, coming up on us fast. We didn’t know if the wolves were hunting us, or the bears, but they were howling and yipping and slavering, and we didn’t want to stop and ask their intentions.  

We were now sandwiched between thundering bears and slavering wolves. Bears were starting to pass me. I whipped up my reindeer and herded the hindmost bear off ro the left, around a little knoll. Sure enough, the wolves followed.

Our Sami crew chief saw what I had in mind. He went around the other side of the knoll, steering the Hypothesis behind its reindeer train. The bears followed him.

Our party hurried to the top of the knoll so that we could watch as bears and wolves met head-on. We expected a gory sight, but it was not like that. Traditionally, bears and wolves are not supposed to meet that way. They stalk each other.

They seemed confused and embarrassed. The bears sneaked back toward Russia, and the woves skulked off in the direction of Sweden.

It was a memorable experience, but I’m finnished with Lapland, and Miss Ellie says there’s Norway she’ll ever drive a dog sled again.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

We love it when readers respond to the Journal. 

Not knowing that he was going to become a straight man, Dr. Lee C. Drickamer, regents’ professor of biological sciences at Northern Arizona University, commented on our recent discussion of “cactus,” “cacti,” and “cactuses.”

“The plural of  ‘octopus’ can be one of two things–but ‘octopi’ is not one of them,” Drickamer e-mailed. ”‘Octopuses’ is acceptable, and this is what is generally used. Since the root word is Greek and not Latin, another correct form is ‘octopodes.’

Miss Ellie, who is always looking for a loophole, responded: “I went to the aquarium and saw more than one octopus.”

Heather Fairweather of Sangre Alto, California, writes: “We’re sick of the hazards of living in California–earthquakes, mudslides, and bridges falling on our heads.  Do you have any of these perils in Arizona?”

There was one mudslide in the Torpor Mountains last winter. It sent up a hell of a dust cloud.

Roger M. of Bisbee wrote, “What does ‘prevarication’ mean? We used to have a dictionary, but my brother ate it. We couldn’t get a word out of him for weeks.

“Is ‘prevarication’ a real word? And how can you prevaricate if you’re lying all the time?”

Roger, most people will tell you that to prevaricate is to lie; to be false or untrue.  But according to my nine-pound dictionary, to prevaricate is not so mendacious as that.

It means “to stray from or evade the truth; to equivocate.”

There are any number of ways to keep from using the simple word “lie.” Nobody really likes the word. I didn’t think about that when I took this job; I should have held out for the title  Official State Equivocator.

In September, responding to a letter from a reader in Hawaii, we discussed Winston Churchill’s phrase “terminological inexactitude,” an eight-dollar euphemism he coined so that he wouldn’t have to come right out and say that another member of Parliament was lying.

Today’s politicians prefer ”disingenuous.” If a senator wants to call a colleague from the other political party a lying polecat, he says, “John is a good friend of mine and a respected colleague,  but he is being disingenuous about this dangerous piece of legislation.” 

“Disingenuous” means “not being straightforward or candid; crafty.”

Breaking the word down, “Ingenuous” means unsophisticated, artless, perhaps naive. Maybe dumb.

We can’t get to the root of this word, because I can’t find a definition of “genuous.” Maybe some of our readers can help us out.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

One of the goodies Miss Ellie gave me for my birthday is a nifty little book about how things were in the year of my birth.

That was 1935, the year Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis were born, and the year the board game Monopoly was introduced. 

The book contains color magazine ads about the wonderful new things available. Like the Arvin car radio, an add-on at a time when manufacturers did not routinely put radios in cars. Before I could afford a car, I owned an Arvin. I ran jumper cables out my bedroom window to my dad’s truck so I could listen to The Grand Ole Opry.  

Ads by Frigidaire and Kelvinator trumpeted the benefits of electric refrigerators. Refrigerators no longer had motors on top, but they still stood on furniture-like legs.

The refrigerator was good for you, and good for your food. “And conveniences!” the ad for the Frigidaire ’35 gushed. “A light flashes on when the door is opened…”

This leads me to one of my favorite examples of ”spin.”  Only washer manufacturers admit to using spin, but our society is held together by the centrifugal force of spin. 

If someone is selling a new product, or a controversial idea, he will describe it as a soaring eagle. Competitors will deride it as a skulking turkey vulture. Often, it is simply someone’s pet crow, put through the spin cycle.   

Electric refrigerators replaced ”cordless” models, iceboxes with no moving parts, fueled by a block of ice inserted into a metal compartment at the top. 

My parents used an icebox as late as 1940. We lived so far out in the country that a fifty-pound block of ice shrank to twelve pounds  by the time the iceman reached our place.  

In the 1930s, manufacturers of ice fought back against competition from the electric refrigerator.

Crystal Ice & Cold Storage Company of Phoenix warned that an electric refrigerator would mummify foods. One ad read,  ”You wouldn’t put a fresh-cut rose in a fruit jar.”

Diamond Ice advertised: “Ice is the ONLY type of refrigeration that maintains correct humidity. It does not draw natural juices from foods, but keeps them properly moist and fresh.”

Sadly for the ice companies, the icebox became a pricey collectible. I still call our refrigerator “the icebox,” a harmless eccentricity to people who call it “the fridge.” What an ugly word.

One related bit of 1935 spin: Continental Can Company had a cute ad touting the health and nutritional benefits of canned fruits and vegetables: “Health and Freshness Sealed in a Can.”

I grew up on canned foods, and the result is a pretty convincing argument for those who advocate fresh food.

Coming Events: Miss Ellie and I will be among many performers playing at the 31st annual Sharlot Hall Folk Festival this coming weekend, October 3 and 4.  We’ll make music as “Howlin’ at the Mooon” at 10 a.m. Saturday on the Showcase Stage, one of several venues on the grounds of Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 W. Gurley Street. Later, we’ll perform individually in various workshops during the weekend.

We’ll also be performing October 17 and 18 at the Ranching and Mining Festival at Model Creek School in Peeples Valley. We’ll sing for the breakfast crowd at 8:20 a.m. both days.

On October 26, we’ll be part of Monday Night Melodies at Peoria Public Library, 8463 West Monroe Street, starting at 7 p.m.

Finally, The Brotherhood of World-class Liars will hold its annual summit in Wickenburg the first week of November. All three of us will be here.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

Kay Dixon Nichols was born in England, and now lives in Hawaii.  She sent an e-mail to say that we appear to have refined ”terminological inexactitude” to a new level.

We’re flattered. Terminological inexactitude is an inexact term for lying. It was coined in 1906 by Winston Churchill, future prime minister of Great Britain, as a sly way of accusing another member of the House of  Commons of evading truth.

Why use a simple, modern word like “spin” when you can consume eleven syllables? It’s certainly more mannerly than shouting, “You lie!”

If you detect any terminological inexactitudes in the political and economic turmoil boiling around you, you let us know.

By the way, did you know that the town of Jerome was named for Eugene Jerome, the first cousin of Sir Winston’s mother, Jennie Jerome? Yeah, I figured you knew that already.

Now and then we have to catch up with what our readers are saying.  Bill Connison wrote: “I was wondering if you knew anything about the Arizona one-eyed cactus? I have heard people call them ‘cacti.’ I am assuming that they have one eye, or else they would have been called ‘cactii.’ I also heard that when they are alone, it is extremely difficult to see the eye. Once two or more are together, the eyes are quite visible.”

That’s a thorny question, and I’m glad Bill was not too spineless to ask it. The one-eyed cactus is an endangered species, if not already extinct.

When I was very young, I was taught that “cactus” was a singular noun, and “cacti” was plural for these singular succulents.

Or was it the other way around?  I could never remember, and not being familiar with Latin, had to look it up. I was uncomfortable in conversation with precise, learned people, because there was never a dictionary handy.

However, language does not stand still. It either evolves or erodes, depending on the sentiments of the learned people who pay attention to words.

Eventually, I had enough maturity and courage to say “cactus,” whether talking about a lone saguaro, or ten acres of cholla. The two modern dictionaries that I have at hand say that’s acceptable. 

You can even call cacti “cactuses,” if you dare.

One final note: Have you made reservations for the holiday tour of Lapland, sponsored by The Wickenburg Institute for Factual Diversity and Reindeer Without Borders?  We have a few openings left, but we’re running out of promotional earmuffs.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

This is one of the proudest moments in the ten-year history of The Wickenburg Institute for Factual Diversity. We have been commissioned to develop a plan to reform health care for hypochondriacs.

The impact that hypochondriacs have on health care costs has been largely overlooked amid the hysteria and bloodshed of the 2009 health care debate. 

Let me say right up front that I’m not a hypochondriac. I may be suggestible, but my ills are real, and devilishly hard to identify.

Twenty years ago, I watched TV commercials for wonderful new drugs to treat dreadful ailments. I’d think about my symptoms and think, “Gee, I wonder if that’s what I have?” 

Often, I’d decide to have some other disease, whose side-effects were not so catastrophic.

Nowadays, I watch commercials about even more esoteric ailments and think, “Thank God, I don’t have that–yet.”

To begin research on our project, I went looking for Larry, who walks around with the fingers of his right hand checking the pulse in his left wrist. I interviewed him a few days ago in his den, where he has used empty pill bottles to build a scale model of the Mayo Clinic.

Larry was happy to talk about his poor health, because it diverted him from thinking about another big disappointment. He is a life-long prospector, and he finally found a pretty good vein of gold out by Octave. The big strike was framed by three Joshua trees growing in a triangle.  Larry took note of the spot, and came to town to toast his good fortune.

When he went back, he couldn’t find his mine.  It was one of those super-hot August days, and the three trees had gone  looking for shade. Of course, Larry feared that he had hallucinated about the mine, but that didn’t account for the nuggets in his pocket.

I know better than to ask a hypochondriac, “How are you?” I said, “Hey, Larry, how’s your copperosity sagaciatin’?” My grandfather used to ask my dad that nonsense question, which means, “How are you?”

Larry answered, “A day late and a dollar short. My lassitude is enlarged, my forehead feels warm, and my nose is dry. I have  a simultaneous jawbone, chronic presarpsis, and Stockholm syndrome.”

“Have you been to see the doctor?”

“Not since Wednesday. Doctors and wives always want to know what my symptoms are.  I don’t have any of the usual symptoms. I suffer from Maylasia. That’s a French word for feeling crappy all over.”

I’ll spare you Larry’s talk of his kidneys and gastrointestinal system.

As Larry talked, I began to feel a little dizzy. Even more dizzying is the challenge ahead of us. Holy internist. This is not going to be easy to figure out.

We have to develop a reform plan to insure people who have imaginary diseases. That implies an imaginary health care plan, with imaginary doctors, phantom nurses and facsimile prescriptions. Selling the plan will require finesse, and maybe skillful television pitchmen. 

People have been wildly imaginative in their objections to health care reform, so they should be able to imagine a stealth health plan. On the bright side, the plan would not raise taxes.  

I ran into Larry at the pharmacy today. He was refilling 28 prescriptions. 

He said he just celebrated his hundredth birthday, and he feels lousy. “I have adult tension deficit disorder.  I saw an ad on TV.”

The North Tegner Street Mirage in Wickenburg is so convincing this summer that it has attracted pelicans from California.

This flock stands bewildered in record high temperatures, wondering why what looks like cool water feels like hot pavement. The disgruntled birds soon flew away in the direction of Lake Pleasant.

By Jim Cook
Official State Liar of Arizona

When I had my right hip replaced recently, the only replacement joint the surgeons could find in my size was manufactured in New Zealand. 

As you know, things from south of the equator run opposite to the way things operate in the northern hemisphere. Clockwise becomes counterclockwise, and versa vice. 

When my right leg steps forward, my left leg responds by taking a step backward. This is the closest I’ve ever come to knowing how to dance. 

I keep coming face to face with myself. Or, we’re dancing cheek to cheek.

Miss Ellie demanded to know what I had done with the old hip. “Did you throw it away?” she asked.

She never throws anything away, and she watches closely to make sure I don’t sneak something out of the house. She still has frayed towels that her ancestors borrowed from the Mayflower.

“I donated the old hip to Habitat for Humanity,” I said. 

“Did you get a receipt?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, but I lost it.”

Walking in circles actually helps me navigate the clutter in our house, and it saved my life the other day when I stumbled into a nest of angry rattlesnakes. 

Ellie’s cousin Elizabeth, better known as Tippy, knows a lot about snakes. She used to keep exotic snakes as pets, and she’s fearless when pursuing rattlers. 

Tippy is also a fine photographer, and she was looking for scenic photographs.  But she knew I wanted to find evidence of crotalus furious, the world’s only fur-bearing rattlesnake. It is  known in Arizona as the Hassayampa Argyle. You may read the “furious” in crotalus furious as meaning very angry. Think “fur”  instead.

We went crawling along the Castle Hot Springs road, stopping to poke the bushes for snakes. It was a grand expedition.

This land belonged to Mexico in the 1820s when mountain men, trappers and illegal immigrants from the U.S., discovered the fur-bearing snake. By 1835, women in New York and London were wearing rattlesnake stoles.  

Other snakes shed their skins several times a year,whenever they outgrow them. During an Arizona summer, the Hassayampa Argyle can’t wait to get out of his fur coat. He sheds his pelt every few days, starting at his lips and peeling backwards until he can slide out of his fur tube, like a woman wriggling out of a tight dress.  

Snake pelts littered the ground when the mountain men came here. Finders keepers. The furs were turned inside-out as the snakes shed them, and the mountain men had only to turn them outside-out. Collecting the long tubes was much easier than trapping and skinning larger varmints.

The largest snake fur on record was nine feet long by eight  inches in diameter, worn as a wrap by a scrawny queen of Belgium. She had it fitted with rattles of 14-carat gold.

Then the furry snakes began to thin out. By 1898, scientists had declared them extinct.

I reported recently that herpetologists and game biologists suspected that the Hassayampa Argyle was back. They would not know until the snakes came out of hibernation in the spring.

On our recent expedition, we stopped at Castle Hot Springs ant talked to Mr. Castle. He said he’d heard there were some fuzzy rattlers over on Snowball-in-Hell Mesa.

When we found crotalus furious, it was almost an afterthought. We had located two western diamondbacks. Then Tippy found a speckled rattlesnake in its red phase.

While she tried to flush the red snake out of a bush so we could photograph him, I got so excited that I was careless about where I stepped.

I heard an odd noise and looked down. I was standing in a nest of crotalus furious. Some of them were wriggling out of their pelts. 

I tried to step away, and my left leg went backwards, as it does nowadays. That took it out of the reach of a striking rattlesnake, who hit another snake right in his beard.

The funny thing was, their warning noise was not the buzz of your normal rattler. It sounded more like a cell phone ringing.

I was so rattled that I picked up a snake and tried to answer it. Miss Ellie called out for me to put the snake down, and Tippy used her snake hook to jerk it away from my ear.

Tippy was taking photos, and Ellie was stuffing snake pelts into a pillow case that she had brought along, just in case.

One modest rattler tried to get back into his pelt. He made a backing-up sound: ”Beep……beep…..beep…” 

Most days around here, dullness comes in bunches. But when a day turns exciting, it stays that way.

On the way home, we stopped at a supper club. Walking toward  the restroom to wash up, I won a dance contest.  The band was playing “Shake Rattle and Roll.”