Snake in the Fireplace!

Living next to a desert wash brings the most interesting critters our way. Unfortunately, sometimes they make it into the house.

Sounds that roust you out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night are never a good thing. Our two cats were clattering about on the rocks in our fireplace around 2:00 am--something they never do since they hate walking on the rocks. I thought maybe they found a pesky scorpion. I never would have thought in a million years it would be a snake. Gary got them to drop it and then the snake slithered back into the rocks. Two half-asleep people trying to get a very fast snake out of the fireplace with an assortment of tongs, oven mits, jars and sticks I'm sure looked quite amusing.

It was a baby snake--looked like a long worm.( I think the type point size in the orange is 24 pt to give you size perspective.) We were able to wrangle it into the special little animal habitat that I have just this type of occasion. I always have to have a good look at whatever comes our way. I looked online and it appears to be a desert night snake. Only slightly venomous--SLIGHTLY? Not supposed to be dangerous to humans at all. I read you should release animals where you find them but I decided to release it down the a few blocks down in the desert rather than back in the fireplace

Here's the dynamic duo on the lookout for their next catch.

Along came a spider or a solifugea

20 years in AZ, I have never seen anything like this so I just had to show you the latest creature we found...
We live next to desert wash which is a great place to find dead fibery plants papermaking. However, living in the desert can involve interesting creatures occasionally wandering into our house. Gary called me over and asked me what kind of bug I thought this was. I counted the legs (8) and decided it was a spider. It looked rather dead so I told him to put it in a jar so I could get better look at it. He slid a card under it and then I saw a leg move....EEK!
After it was in the jar it started moving around like crazy! (thus the blurry photo) But yikes, I thought...it could have jumped on Gary's hand.

This creature has the same coloring as a scorpion so I looked it up online. Per wikipedia, this is a camel spider or wind scorpion. Solifugae is an order of Arachnida, containing more than 1,000 described species in about 140 genera. The name derives from Latin, and means those that flee from the sun. The order is also known by the names Solpugida, Solpugides, Solpugae, Galeodea and Mycetophorae. Solifugae are not true spiders, which are from a different order, Araneae. Like scorpions and harvestmen, they belong to a distinct arachnid order.Notice the suction cups under its body--helps him climb! It is a really interesting creature and it eats a lot of annoying things like termites and scorpions.

I released it in the desert wash--back to the wild (albeit--much farther away from our house). I read that they actually avoid the sun and that seemed to be true because it traversed over lots of rocks and sticks for quite a ways before heading into a shady thicket of brush and disappearing.