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One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog was how dry it is here.  The humidity is about 3%.  If you fill a glass with ice water there is no condensation on the outside of the glass because there’s no water in the air.  When you hang clothes out on the line, by the time you hang the last thing up the first thing is dry.  I have five cement ponds that I fill up every day.  Javelinas, deer, coyotes, rabbits, a bobcat and some small creatures that might be packrats come to drink, as well as all kinds of birds, bees, and butterflies.  They are so desperate for water that most of them don’t move when I go outside, although the coyotes like to chase the deer.  Yesterday I was watering a rosemary hedge when I saw something long and gray slither through the branches.  It was a diamond backed rattlesnake.  I sprayed it with water to drive it away from the porch, but the snake just lay there flicking its tongue in and out.  It clearly enjoyed getting wet.  Harold called a local scientist, who showed up in less than ten minutes.  By this time the snake was well-hidden in the rosemary, so I sprayed the bushes until it got mad enough to rattle.  The scientist zeroed in on the sound, caught it with a long pole and carried it off in a bucket.  He released it at a pond several miles away.  He said that the small hills we can see from our house have caves that contain thousands of rattlesnakes in the winter, and that we are in the middle of their summer migration route.