My Backyard Reptiles

The biggest fear for every Arizonan is running into a rattlesnake, worse even than encountering a scorpion or tarantula. While it's not uncommon to find the two arachnids around your home, you're fortunately much less likely to find a rattlesnake in your yard.

I actually thought I discovered a baby rattler in my garden two weeks ago while watering a recently planted tree. The small snake squirmed and slithered while the water slowly encroached in the planter box. Only about a foot long and quite skinny, the reptile looked like a rattlesnake to me except for its lack of a rattle, which hasn't yet formed in very young rattlers. With a yard-long garden stake, I raised the timid snake to get a better look and snap a few photos with my cellphone before finally allowing the animal to coil defensively in a tiny, dry landscape light.

The snake isn't the only reptile living in my Phoenix backyard. As soon as the days begin to lengthen in late winter, a large desert spiny lizard makes regular appearances. Usually it scurries to the safety of the lantana bordering much of my landscape as soon as it sees me. This year a juvenile, perhaps born in my yard, is living near my patio, hanging out in the safety of a pair of my yard shoes that I keep outside the sliding glass door. For the first time, I've started shaking out the shoes before slipping them on, a routine many Arizonans practice to avoid the sting of a slumbering scorpion.

Another lizard living in my backyard is one of Arizona's nine whiptail species. This hot weather-loving variety must be different from the countless individuals I see on my hikes along the forested trails in Prescott where the temperatures are much cooler.

It turns out that the snake that piqued my recent interest in my backyard reptiles was not a rattlesnake at all but rather a night snake. It's a widely dispersed species that indeed hunts at night. My dawn watering schedule, timed to avoid the worst of August's heat and humidity, must have overlapped a bit with the snake's nocturnal hunting.

After almost twenty years of living in my Phoenix house, it's the very first snake I've encountered on my property. For the record, I've never seen a scorpion or tarantula, the other most fear-inducing home invaders. It's now part of the small community of reptiles, joining the spiny lizards, whiptails, and much more elusive and equally nocturnal geckos, that all call my backyard home.