A FOOTHILLS ADVENTURE
"Ahhhhhh. This is the life."
I raised my can of beer to our hosts and toasted the occasion. "To good friends and better times."
"To not being in Saudi Arabia," Steve appended. And to that we all shouted, "Amen!"
In the late seventies, Steve and I had worked together for a couple of years in Saudi Arabia in close contact with the locals. Dealing with Saudis was very character-building but we made it through those years with only one or two permanent mental scars because the Arabian peninsula is widely empty and the desert and the sea there provided ample recreation and seclusion from the indigenous population. We managed to have some fun in spite of our misery, but eventually we reached saturation. Steve and family returned to California to reoccupy their home there while I took a sabbatical and went to Australia and New Zealand for nine months before returning to California.
In New Zealand I encountered a Swiss couple, budget tourists, hitch-hiking and otherwise bumming and working their way around the world. I met Martin and Corina in the communal kitchen of a hostel in Turangi while cooking up a whopping great big trout I'd caught on the Tongariro River that day, and they graciously accepted an invitation to join me for dinner. That trout, and the entertainment factor they enjoyed from listening to my creatively flawed German, established a vibrant friendship.
It turns out that Martin was an enthusiastic fisherman, so he joined me the following day on the river. But we fished the entire day without much success and wound up back at the hostel that evening rather frustrated. We exchanged addresses, and I assured the two of them that if they ever came to the USA and found me we'd go fishing there, though it was unlikely we'd find anything as big as those kiwi rainbows.
Well, a couple of months later they did look me up in California and together we went running around the state hunting adventure. We had already sampled some of the pleasures of the San Francisco Bay Area, but I had made it a goal to give them a more comprehensive experience than they might get by following the guide book and we were now on a camping, fishing and sight-seeing trip to the mountains.
Our first stop was a visit with Steve and family. Coincidentally, they were visiting Steve's dad, who had a beautiful ranch home east of Fresno in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We'd been invited to spend the night with them there.
California's foothill country is a magical place, a zone of transformation between the drab, dry, grassy hills of the central valley and the wondrous forests and lofty peaks of the Sierras. Oak glens and scraggly pines interspersed with dry grassy fields, brush and granite outcroppings give the hills a character all their own and promise adventure.
There is an abundance of wildlife in the foothills. Raccoons, skunks, opossums, deer, coyotes and wildcats abound along with a plethora of smaller critters too numerous to mention. In short, there was plenty to pique the exploratory passions of the child in me and give my Swiss friends that exotic experience they were looking for.
Anyway, that's how we found ourselves sitting around a worn, back yard picnic table sipping brew with Steve and his family on this fine, August evening, talking about Saudi Arabia as the late afternoon sun dipped into the western tree line and a warm coolness settled upon the land.
"I miss going scorpion hunting," Bradley said nostalgically. Bradley is Steve's younger kid and he was seven years old when we were in Saudi. All he remembered about the place was swimming and scorpion hunts. They sometimes went out into the desert at night with a black light. Scorpions would fluoresce in the light and were then easy to catch. The hunters would take them home and encase them in clear, plastic goo. When the plastic hardened they made some really gory paperweights that were popular souvenirs.
Having mentioned scorpions, little Bradley had inadvertently broached a subject that goes under the general classification of "creepy stuff" and our conversation went downhill from there.
"In Australia they have tons of spiders," I volunteered. "They come out at night and hang down from the eaves of houses and make webs so strong that you can hear them snap when you bust em up".
This punched one of Corina's buttons. "Eeeeew! I remember them, too. nd big, hairy spiders that ran around like rats!"
"Like tarantulas", squealed Bradly's older sister Joey, nine, "we have them here!"
"Yeah!" It was the wife, Nancy's turn. A tall, good natured redhead with a tom-boyish bent, her eyes suddenly widened with excitement. "Oh woooow! Lets go on a tarantula hunt!" And the kids went crazy.
A couple of beers earlier it is doubtful that I could have sanctioned that endeavor. But the evening was so nice and the kids were so jazzed that we just had to do it. Besides, what better way to give Martin and Corina a little adventure? So as the last murkiness of dusk was being replaced by the cool light of a crescent moon and a million stars we set out along a lonely country road that ran past the house in pursuit of a good scare.
Armed with flashlights we walked along the road while our hosts each explained their versions of the technique. It seemed that the task at hand, should we actually find a tarantula, was to draw it outside its burrow for a few seconds of thrill before it retreated to safety back inside. To do this we would pluck a dry foxtail stem and use it to gently tickle the ground a couple of inches from a tarantula's lair. That would excite the spider to pounce on the tip of the stem. It would then quickly realize it had been duped and retreat. The game for us, of course, would be to maintain some degree of dignity when the spider pounced.
My Swiss friends and I listened intently, and as we walked I scanned the foxtails along the roadside.
"Actually," I said trying to sound casual, "these weeds are pretty short."
The longest I saw didn’t seem to be over two feet. I had heard stories of tarantulas jumping much farther than that. I didn’t know if they were true, but the thought of a monster spider clinging to my nose seemed reasonable cause for concern.
The little road was paved but had lots of worn spots and potholes. Along one side there was an embankment and between this embankment and the pavement was a little drainage ditch, maybe a foot wide, the same deep, and dry as a bone. Our flashlight beams randomly scanned the embankment and the ditch like search lights during a bomber raid. There were lots of little holes in the embankment, no doubt dug by mice or squirrels or something like that, but what really got my attention were the black widow spider webs spanning the little ditch just about everywhere. And they were occupied! The bulbous spiders clung to their disorganized strands belly up, the bright red hourglass emblems shining in our lights. Many scurried into hiding and disappeared when our beams found them.
Wearing the apparel of summer, we were all in shorts and sandals and we got real spooked about the tiniest twitch of a hair or the slightest itch as we walked along. Nobody felt any urge to leave the road.
"There's one!!!" Shouted Bradley after about fifteen minutes. He pointed excitedly, like some kind of hound, at a dark spot on the embankment. The Swiss and I approached the kid like he'd just pointed out Sasquatch and, sure enough, there was the tarantula. Just a couple of legs were visible sticking out of the hole but there was no denying that this was one monster spider!
"It is looking like monkey fingers!", noticed Martin, and we novices stared awestruck at this ominous sight.
But this one got away. Our lights annoyed him and he zipped back into his hole and was gone. Steve took the occasion to point out that you couldn't put the main beam on them or they'd hide.From that point on we stopped doubting claims of tarantulas and the hunt was definitely on, if nervously so.
A few minutes later Nancy spotted another one perched at the entrance to its hole. Showing much greater courage and enthusiasm than some of us she was quick to claim the spider as hers. I noticed a hint of disappointment in her expression as the claim went uncontested, but I felt it better to leave well enough alone.
She carefully sneaked forward, keeping the light very dim on the spider, and slowly extended her weed stem at the hole. The tip of the stem had a couple of dead foxtail shells hanging off of it and these touched the ground an inch or so from the spider.
At first nothing happened. But then, with incredible speed, the spider pounced on the tip of the stem. It happened so fast it was as if he just appeared outside the hole with no movement at all! Nancy held her own admirably well but the Swiss and I jumped back a quick yard or two and somebody gave out a muffled, high pitched squeal. I'm not sure who. Then, just as quickly, the spider fled into the hole and it was over.
Steve looked at me and inquired, "Who's next?"
The kids enthusiastically volunteered, but Steve was persistent. Cruelly aware of my spider phobia, and smiling sadistically, he repeated, "Who's next?"
"Ok, ok, ok," I said sheepishly, accepting the challenge
The kids grumbled about it but immediately recommenced the search and in less than ten minutes they'd found another one! Another really big arachnid. I uttered a cynical thank you to them for their eagerness to please, and being infinitely more foolish than brave I moved cautiously forward to the task.
Martin and Corina stalked behind me right on my heals while Steve and clan hung back. I mentally went over how far away I could be and still reach the spider with my stem, which seemed to be getting shorter by the second. Big spider, I thought. Whew. Biiiiiig spider!
My quarry sat motionless as the tip of the stem, which seemed nervous, touched the ground near him. I could do this, I thought. Noooooo problem. And then the next thing I knew I was on the other side of the road panting.
It took me a while to put all the events in place, but it seems that while the rest of us were placing our full concentration on the spider young Bradley had seen an opportunity. Nudging his sister, he reached forward with his own stem and touched Corina on the back of her leg just as the tarantula was considering its attack. Corina, of course, went ballistic. Her scream easily classified as primal and alerted instincts in the rest of us we didn't even know we had. Our little group flew back in all directions, as if a grenade had gone off among us. When we recovered our wits the kids were rolling on the road in laughter and the spider, of course, was gone.
The Swiss and I stood there where we landed, open-mouthed and blinking, at which point Steve and Nancy completely lost it and fell into uncontrollable giggles. That somewhat diffused the situation and evaporated any credible authority with which I might have expressed to those little so-and-so's my feelings on the matter.
But I learned a very important lesson that night regarding kids. Namely, ignore them at your peril. And while in the woods it is a very good idea to keep them in front of you at all times (especially if there are bears about). If you can't then they should be hogtied and gagged.
Later, back at the ranch and with the trauma having mostly subsided we sat comfortably in the den watching through a picture window the nightly visit of raccoons and opossums at the feeder on the deck. While they seemed pretty tame we were vigorously warned not approach them. Nancy was especially stern in countermanding Bradly’s innocently voiced suggestion that Corina go out and pet the black and white “kittys” that showed up a little later.
You’ve gotta love kids.
Martin and Corina
But though we subsequently toured the grandeur of Yosemite and the Sequoias, fished the Kings River and camped in the high Sierra, Martin and Corina spoke of nothing so much as they did that one evening in the foothills.
The trip was a smashing success.