Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 152 - CHOLLA

I MENTIONED THE DESERT previously, the wild desert, uninhabited and bereft of human structures for long stretches. In those long stretches, the craziest things would happen.

Arriving as a preteen from the cold north, I was utterly unaccustomed to the desert's flora and fauna though I quickly grew to appreciate its dry and desolate beauty. Creosote bushes were the mainstay. Five to eight feet tall, these scrawny, tiny-leafed wonders were interspersed on the desert floor a few yards away from each other, creating the perfect trails to weave in and out of. Since the desert was generally flat and comprised of hard-packed, dusty soil, anyone with two feet or two wheels could easily feel lost in the broad expanse of the northwest valley.

Few ever truly got lost. The mountains to the south were always a guidepost, rising a few thousand feet. To the north, the valley continued for twenty miles into the foothills where the elevation gradually rose hundreds of feet into lush Sonoran desert.

But for us teenagers, 'lush' was happening everywhere in the flats.

When the family moved to Phoenix, at least in part to get away from the painful memories of the north, my mom purchased a house facing directly out to the desert. The house and desert were separated by a rarely used dirt road whose only purpose was to give off-roaders a place to tear in a straight line for long stretches on their motorcycles and four-wheelers without encountering police or sheriff's deputies.

Since the new house was also a hastily constructed one, it was a natural haven for any bug attempting to cool itself from the searing desert floor. Scorpions were regular indoor visitors, and you dared never to don a shoe without shaking it first – at arm's length.

These were not the 'slightly-worse-than-a-bee-sting' scorpions found in other dry locales. No, they were palm tree scorpions. The smaller and more transparent they were, the worse their sting.

My mother's friend, one that lasted until she married the evil Chuck, suffered the great misfortune of failing the shoe-shake routine. One of the little buggers stung her big toe. After icing it but finding the massive swelling continued, she rushed to the hospital. Her toe had grown to twice its normal size, and she spent three weeks at rest with her foot elevated.

Bugs were bothersome but not usually lethal. Black widows found shelter in every dark corner of the house, ruling the underworld with their red hourglass precision. A friend of mine had a sister who had been badly bitten by a large one. She swore the dark mistress emitted an audible scream before leaping at her, as if in an arachnid remake of a bad martial arts movie.

Not intending to overstate the daily hassles of that early desert living, the valley had more than its share of other unpleasant bugs. Simply a fact of life. Earwigs, often misnamed as vinegarroons, regularly ransacked the house, releasing a malodorous vinegar stench when you stepped on one. When it came to roaches, however, Northwest Phoenix was spared the large winged beasts that proliferated in the city proper.

Growing up in Northern Arizona with a forest across the highway, I was accustomed to bugs, and I quickly learned how to get along with them. But my mother considered them a constant, unwelcome nuisance whose most effective method of control was 'the bug guys.'

The always youthful, uniformed gents would visit each month escorting canisters of god-forsaken chemicals that, no doubt, had long since evaded every attempt to comply with the weak national guidelines for pesticide use in homes. Since our concrete slab foundation was a few inches above desert floor grade, most bugs only required a moment to traverse up the foundation and enter through the multitude of inviting cracks in the slab or crumbled grouting in the slump-block walls.

Once the bug made it that far, the fortunate invader was then given free reign throughout the entire house. The drywall attached to its flimsy wooden frames never touched the concrete, so the space behind the crooked floor baseboards served as comfortable, cool, and safe homes as well as convenient shelter from foot-crushing harm. We may as well have used Las Vegas neon lights to invite them inside to the buffet.