September 17 -- A Possible Mountain Lion, Snakes, And An Evening Thunderstorm

First, the obligatory sunrise --

My friend, neighbor and real estate guru Helen came over on her mountain bike to deliver bread that she'd bought for me during her "Costco Run" the day before; I gave her some Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownies in return. She then said "you have snakes tracks in your driveway". I walked back out with her to the front gate, and she pointed out two snake tracks -- saying one looked large and it could've been a rattler.  Does seeing evidence of a rattler on my property, er, "rattle" me? Not at all. I have 4 acres, with most of it overgrown with mesquite, grasses, and other high-desert flora, so I'm sure they're all around me. (Just so long as they don't mass attack the house, like an episode from "The Outer Limits".)  Then I raked up the cuttings of grass and weeds from my last stab at weed-whacking, and watched the clouds come in over Cave Creek Canyon -- 

There was a 50% chance of "scattered thunderstorms" for the evening -- but I got that from weather.com, which is not the most reliable of weather prognosticators. But in this instance, they were right; about 6pm sheets of rain moved down Cave Creek Canyon, accompanied by thunder and lightning, creating a watery curtain in front of Silver Peak -- 

This is one of the things I love about living out here -- the changes in weather in just a few hours' time. It rained -- HARD -- for about 10 minutes, then it moved to the east, down into the valley, and it cleared up here. I'd actually wanted the ground to be wet -- because I was checking to see if a certain visitor was checking out the water feature. I'd had Coues deer, Gray Fox, cotton rats and birds use the water. which is kind of rancid as it doesn't drain -- I'll get rid of it and build a water feature off the ground -- but THIS possible visitor was something special. Up in the canyon remote cameras have been set up, and it filmed a mountain lion --

Mountain lions, aka cougars, have been seen on occasion in the area, even in "downtown" Portal, and a friend had an encounter with one in his back yard; when he did what you're supposed to do with a cougar -- look bigger, yell, make towards his direction -- he said the cougar merely gave him a bored glance, then turned around and ambled off into the brush. My friend Helen said I could very well have a mountain lion checking out my water feature, so recommended that I smooth the ground near the water with, say, a rake, wet it, then check the next morning for animal tracks in the wet dirt. The heavy rain did the trick, so this morning I'm going to check for tracks. What will I do if I find some big paw prints? Revel in the fact that nature is coming to my back door...