A Gila monster surfaces after 2 days of hard monsoon rains.

It had been raining pretty hard all August and I hadn’t been out trekking for weeks. So, when the sky finally cleared one early evening I grabbed my camera and headed off in the direction of the old Sopori Ranch, once owned by movie mogul Jack Warner of Warner Brothers fame. Well now that is a fascinating yarn all by itself, but let me get to the meat and potatoes of this story. People that have lived their whole lives in these parts can’t claim to have seen one of these interesting critters, but I was lucky enough to blunder down the wrong trail and run smack dab into one. The venomous Gila monster I had seen pictures of all my life! These lizards spend 95% of their lives in their burrows and as luck would have it we crossed paths, albeit, briefly before he disappeared into the underbrush. Slow moving though he was he was very aware of my presence and did a slow motion skedaddle.