10-24-2003, 01:34 AM
[cool]Yep. If you started making an inventory of all the stickery critters and nasty flora in these parts, you might be inclined to order a Humvee instead of a flimsy old float tube.
There are "horny toads" all over the western states and down into Mexico. I think I heard there are about fifty different varieties. some of them...actually horned LIZARDS...have no head spikes at all. Others, like the ones around here, have several hard bony protuberances. However, you would just about have to slam your craft down on one to suffer any damage. The spiny critter would probably expire before the tube did.
And, while I have seen a few gila monsters, they are mostly nocturnal and are seldom seen by anybody. They come out in daytime only rarely...when they get "horny" too. They do not have big fangs, like snakes, but have some nasty backward pointing teeth in the sides and back of their mouth. They use these to chew in their venom, rather than injecting it, like a rattler. The venom creates a lot of pain but is not nearly as dangerous as some of the local buzztails.
One of the biggest hazards to flotation craft are the skeletons of expired cactus. They float around on the lakes and eventually wash up on shore...with the spines still very much capable of penetrating either flesh or air chambers...or both. I have had more than one excursion prematurely ended when I noticed a stream of bubbles coming up from the bottom of my tube...after having set it down on one of those hard to see cactus remnants prior to launching.
Maybe on Halloween, when you are in the mood for a scary story, I will tell you about the rattlesnakes that come swimming out in the lake and see our tubes as good temporary resting spots. TubeBabe doesn't like any kind of snakes, and when a rattler is anywhere within a hundred yards, she does a great imitation of a Polaris missile launching out of a tube on a submarine.
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There are "horny toads" all over the western states and down into Mexico. I think I heard there are about fifty different varieties. some of them...actually horned LIZARDS...have no head spikes at all. Others, like the ones around here, have several hard bony protuberances. However, you would just about have to slam your craft down on one to suffer any damage. The spiny critter would probably expire before the tube did.
And, while I have seen a few gila monsters, they are mostly nocturnal and are seldom seen by anybody. They come out in daytime only rarely...when they get "horny" too. They do not have big fangs, like snakes, but have some nasty backward pointing teeth in the sides and back of their mouth. They use these to chew in their venom, rather than injecting it, like a rattler. The venom creates a lot of pain but is not nearly as dangerous as some of the local buzztails.
One of the biggest hazards to flotation craft are the skeletons of expired cactus. They float around on the lakes and eventually wash up on shore...with the spines still very much capable of penetrating either flesh or air chambers...or both. I have had more than one excursion prematurely ended when I noticed a stream of bubbles coming up from the bottom of my tube...after having set it down on one of those hard to see cactus remnants prior to launching.
Maybe on Halloween, when you are in the mood for a scary story, I will tell you about the rattlesnakes that come swimming out in the lake and see our tubes as good temporary resting spots. TubeBabe doesn't like any kind of snakes, and when a rattler is anywhere within a hundred yards, she does a great imitation of a Polaris missile launching out of a tube on a submarine.
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