The Life and Times of the Plume

It was our habit to run or take walks in the evening, after the heat of the day had turned from a boil to a gentle simmer. Even in the winter months, I often found the daytime temperatures beneath the directness of the Arizona sun to be too much for my cold weather loving bones. It was a Sunday in April when we set out for a late afternoon stroll through the wheat fields and alfalfa fields that surrounded Achii Hanyo Native Fish Facility. We lived in the middle of nowhere on an Indian Reservation a short distance from the Colorado River in Southwest Arizona. Robert was the manager and lone employee of Achii Hanyo, a remote satellite station of United States Fish and Wildlife Service, he was raising and researching an endangered fish that no one had ever heard of in the middle of a hot chunk of desert.

To put it simply, our region of the state was arguably the hottest part of Arizona and the summer temperatures there were comparable to Death Valley, California. It was the middle of April; I was wearing a strapless sundress and Robert was dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, still we were glowing with a slight sweat as soon as we reached the edge of the three acre compound to set out upon our half mile driveway that would link us with the gravel roads that crosshatched the agricultural portions of the reservation we lived on.

The tamarisk, hell bent on infiltration and invasion in the Southwest, lined the driveway in a thick wall of combustible green-feathered branches. The earth that made our road, in this part of the reservation, was a hard packed clay atrocity; with a smattering of rain, it turned to slick mud; with a deluge, it turned into foot deep gumbo making it nearly impossible for us to make the drive into town, even with our truck locked in four wheel drive. Our vehicles had cut ruts through the mud after the last rains and those ruts had baked, stone hard, under that fierce Arizona sunshine and were lined with the faintness of delicate silt. With every trip we made to town now, in the dry times, with every stroll down this rugged path, our tires and shoes broke the colloidal road rumples into fine powder that eventually would be inch deep silt, stirred up easily by the wind coursing through the desert – wind made of greedy, pick pocket fingertips, actively inciting sections of earth into sky riot and then rearranging those fine particles in temporary loess all across the state.

We walked, joined in lively conversation, making future plans, dreaming together about what life might hold for us. We walked, with our eyes on the world around us, taking in details of nature. We walked with our eyes flickering down to the earth beneath our feet, watching for rattle snakes, scorpions and cotton tail rabbits. We walked with the song of the red wing blackbirds in our ears. We walked.

We took the dogs on these forays into the fields with us. At the time, we had Farley, a German shorthaired pointer, and Tuba, a small but fierce miniature dachshund. We kept Farley closely heeled at our side or on a leash; as a far ranging gun dog, he tended to get a half mile ahead of us on our walks, bounding through alfalfa fields and wheat fields with the hope of locating doves and desert quail in his heart. Tuba was content to gallop just far enough ahead of us to locate and bury his nose in sink holes in the ditches by the fields. These sink holes were created by the flood irrigation employed by the local farmers. Remarkably enough, the valley we lived in was fecund and lush where it had been planted and irrigated. Alfalfa crops were neon green in contrast with the ubiquitous, bone dry mesas studded with creosote and ironwood that rose up blunted and beige on all horizons.

The farmers on the reservation sometimes cut and baled up to nine crops of hay in one growing season. Wheat grew thick and vibrant with unbelievably robust, whiskered heads such as I had never seen when growing up in Saskatchewan, the grain belt of Canada. The entire valley had been part of the vastly braided Colorado River channel before the waterway was contained by dams. The waters of the river had retreated into a neat, powerful body of flow, but the ancient paths of the river had left behind piles of nutrient rich soil, perfect for raising rich crops throughout the valley between Parker, Arizona and Blythe, California. These farms and fields were connected with concrete and dirt canals, growing smaller and muddier the further they crept from the actual river body.

The fields by our house and in actuality, Achii Hanyo Native Fish Facility itself, were watered by the mighty Colorado and it’s beautiful, icy emerald waters. No part of the valley, even in dry times, was without hope of moisture, thanks to that canal system; even for me, on days when the desert left me feeling brittle and frail, there was always the water and the peace that came from the baptism found in that river.

On this day, while we walked, the fields had been freshly watered, the air was humid; the song birds stood on the cattail heads in the ditches and there was a gentle gurgle and splash of water as it spread and swept slowly across carefully graded fields. We had covered three miles of our stroll and were discussing future plans for travel when we came around a bend in the road – a bend in our life path really, in hindsight. Tuba had galloped ahead, as usual and was sniffing around a clump of brittle brush on the edge of the road when he began to bark hysterically. Robert and I looked at each other and simultaneously yelled, “Tuba! No!” At that exact moment, we watched our ten pound, black and tan dachshund leap at a diamondback rattle snake and receive a venomous strike in the side of his nose. He leaped away from the snake and then lunged towards that wretched reptile a second time, snarling and growing like he was in combat with the devil himself, nearly taking a second snake bite on the other side of his nose. Finally, our voices pierced through the armor of his fierceness and he suddenly turned away from the snake and took a few steps towards us to our great surprise.

By this point, I was beside myself and was screaming, out of control, nearly blinded by the sound coming from my mouth and heart. I could feel fear flying from my mouth, gliding over the surface of my skin; my mind was closing itself and there was just the thunder of my own voice and the steel of my spine holding me rigid and rooted in place in that damned desert soil. I was terrified by the population of rattlesnakes that lived in the immediate surround of our home in the desert and I had no control over my fear or the visceral reaction of my body and the primal reaction of my voice when I came upon them. I was convinced that my life had been saved, multiple times, by the rapid reflexes of my body in situations that involved snakes. Over a period of three years, my reaction to rattle snakes had changed from one of fear and great respect to absolute terror and general mental and physical paralysis.

I was so afraid. Afraid of that snake. Afraid for my dog. There, on the ground, fifteen feet from where I stood, a seven foot diamondback rattle snake was making it’s slow retreat into an alfalfa field. My dog was whining and scratching at his nose. The sun was shining. All I could do was stand and scream while tears poured down my face. We were all alive, for the time being.

Robert, a man of action, ran towards Tuba now that the snake had disappeared. He grabbed the dog and wrapped one hand around Tuba’s long nose and proceeded to place his lips around the puncture wounds the snake had left behind. Robert sucked and spit, hoping that he could decrease the immediate effects of the venom, if any had been administered at all, on Tuba’s face and body. He sucked and spit. His saliva, when it hit the ground, was tinged pink with our dog’s blood. He sucked and spit and I stood there and panted, void of sound, void of myself, still choked with my fear and paralyzed by the violence that had just passed before my eyes. Robert continued to suck on Tuba’s wound and spit what he hoped was venom from his tongue and that small dog began to cry. Faintly, at first; I couldn’t tell his crying from a sighing whine but already, I knew what was to come. I told Robert to stand up, we had to get Tuba home.

We were three miles from the front door of our federal government housing when Tuba encountered this rattlesnake. We were a two hour drive in any direction from a veterinarian clinic. It was a Sunday evening now, the sun was beginning sink low in the distance. Tuba’s face was beginning to swell; he seemed dopey, maybe even lazy, as Robert carefully cradled him in his arms. My hands shook. I yelled at Farley, in my fear and frustration, I kept him tethered close, I cursed snakes under my breath as we made the long walk home, wary and already exhausted.

When we finally reached the house, Tuba was in pain. His nose was twice its normal size. We continued to hold him, his eyes were bright and he seemed to prefer being in our arms despite his obvious discomfort and pain. Robert ran to the office in the house and quickly researched rattle snake bites on our dial-up internet. We knew that if he were to perish from this snake bite, his death would come in a couple of hours, according to the information we had at hand. We calculated the time it would take for us to contact a veterinarian who could make an emergency call on a Sunday evening, the time it would take us to drive to one, the possibility of whether or not Tuba would even survive with the help of anti-venom coursing through the ten pounds of his body. It had taken us an hour to walk the three miles home. It would take us at least another couple of hours to drive to the nearest veterinarian clinic for treatment. We stood there, in our kitchen, weighing our options, hoping with all our hearts, attempting to trick our minds into believing that there was hope, at all, in this crazy and unforeseen situation. Eventually we decided that an hour and half had already passed since the incident and the damage had been done. If Tuba was to survive, he would, if not, he wouldn’t.

We called friends in town and asked them to drive out to us with a package of needles so we could give Tuba direct vitamin C injections, just beneath his skin, which would supposedly help neutralize the venom that was beginning to shut his body down. They came, sensing the seriousness of the situation by the cracking of our voices over the phone. By now, Tuba was in extreme pain and was beginning to look unlike himself. His long snout had already swollen into an awkward and bulbous shape. His breathing was steady and his eyes were bright, but I could tell he was extremely uncomfortable.

Western diamondback venom is hemotoxic. It is a poison that kills tissue – kills flesh. It causes massive swelling in the immediate injection site and is noted as the most painful type of venomous bite one can incur. Farley continued to circle over to where Tuba was lying on the couch; he whined and leaned in to prod Tuba with his nose. With one faint touch Tuba’s body went rigid and he began an involuntarily bloodcurdling shriek, unable to stop his screams, unable to stand up and walk because of his pain, unable to move, incapable of preventing himself from screaming out; the sight of him being wracked with pain filled me with guilt. In hindsight, perhaps we should have tried to get him to a veterinarian. Would the drive down twenty miles of washboard gravel roads before reaching a paved highway have been any kinder to him? Would a veterinarian have been able to save him after the effects of a three hour old snake bite on the face of a small, ten pound dog? We don’t know if we made the right decision, to this day, but I don’t rightly know that one choice was better than the other, and I am convinced that no matter our decision, we would have found ourselves at the same conclusion in the end: the end of Tuba.

All night long, we fed our dog water, with the help of a small syringe. All night long we kept vigil and injected vitamin C directly beneath a pinch of skin at the scruff of Tuba’s darling neck. Eventually his face became so swollen that our small dachshund looked more like a rottweiler than a tiny badger hunter. And over the final thirteen hours of his short life, we watched the violence of rattlesnake venom shut his small body down. His breathing grew shallow, and his eyes grew cloudy. There came a moment when we knew he no longer could see us or hear us. We held him in our arms, until the end. We prayed for him; we prayed for ourselves. When his breathing turned to shallow chokes, we told him to let go, and he did. We did too. He was barely recognizable in the end hours, in the dark night of the desert, and oh, how we cried.

Tuba was a dog, a fierce little dog, but we loved him. He was the first living thing Robert and I cared for together, in our marriage. As soon as life left his small body, we felt a void in our household, in our lives. When the sky finally turned to dawn, Robert took a spade and dug a deep grave beneath the mesquite tree behind our single-wide trailer. We placed Tuba’s body in that hole and Farley cried out, beside himself at the loss of his brother and friend. He leaped down into the grave and licked at Tuba’s disfigured face; I covered my eyes with my hands.

The sunrise was beautiful that morning. We placed large pieces of rough chrysocolla, which we had found in a tailings pile at a remote desert mine, on top of the fresh turned dirt of Tuba’s grave, reached for each others hands and stood in the light of the new day, hoping that the sun could restore our energy and emotions. Robert cried then, filled with guilt, filled with sadness, filled with loss. We asked each other if we had done the right thing. We asked each other if we could have done better by our small dog, if we might have saved him after all, then we turned, went inside our house laid down in our small bed and fell asleep tightly spooned and thick with grief.

I remember feeling bitter in the days following Tuba’s death. I remember giving the desert a face, in my mind, the face of a heartless witch. In my heart I believed, and I still do, that the desert demands payment. On her borders to the North, South, East and West she keeps tollbooths, when you pass through to explore the vastness of her wild and beautiful spaces, she demands a payment. Either give her your small gold coin or she will take a payment from you; there is no choice in the matter. It was improbable that Robert and I would escape the low desert of Arizona without personally suffering snake bites since we were always out and about on the land. We came across those slithering pieces of the animal world more often than we can say and even dug up a rattlesnake hibernaculum a mere fifty feet from the back door of our house, deep in a levy between the earthen ponds of Achii Hanyo. There was a massive, nine foot long rattler that lived on our driveway who barely missed biting me in the leg on two different occasions. I viewed my escape from that huge snake as a miracle. In all honestly, I’m glad the desert took her payment in the form of a small dog instead of taking my husband from me, or me from my husband.

The experience of losing a dog to a rattlesnake bite was one of the most violent acts of nature I have ever witnessed in person. Watching the slow and painful death of my valiant dog was a great test for me as a human being, and suddenly, more than ever before, a great bright light shone down on the necessity of the cycles of life and death, that light had a profound effect on my heart and soul; it opened me up, even more than I thought possible, to the real reasons for living: love, hope, peace and kindness to all and for all living things. I hate the desert and I love the desert for these lessons learned; for her tough love, for the way she raised me up and brought me to my knees simultaneously and repeatedly.

When Robert and I moved to Arizona in the first year of our marriage, we didn’t know anything about the desert except that it rarely rained there. The arrival of Tuba in our lives marked the beginning of our adventures at Achii Hanyo and he also marked the end with his death. Two months after he died we packed up our belongings and moved to Idaho. But this, this is the story of Arizona and our adventures there.

An Introduction

Friday Unfolding

Tiny Trinkets

Chapter One

Wherein The Plume Squanders An Afternoon