Q: We have a herd of javelinas that have decided to come down to a common area in our neighborhood directly behind our house and use it for a latrine. If you’ve never smelled javelina poop, it’s something else. Is there anything that will repel these creatures? I tried mothballs already.
A: Thank you for sharing your thoughts about javelina poop. I really wasn’t hungry for lunch anyway.
TEMPE — Japanese spider crabs are most often found off the coasts of Japan and Taiwan, in ocean waters as deep at 2,000 feet or as shallow as 160 feet. But not all of them live in those areas. Two members of the species are currently residing in a tank of water less than 10 feet deep smack in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
Q: We thought we left cockroaches behind in Chicago. Instead, we find they’re huge out here. My wife is completely freaked.
A: Oh, yeah, and you’re not freaked? Perhaps no crawly thing, aside from the Legislature, invokes more horror and disgust than a big old sewer roach skittering around your bathtub or grazing on a box of saltines in the cupboard. Or coming at you across the sheets.
Roaches. We hate ’em. God probably had some good reason when he created them, but it’s a mystery to mortals.
Perhaps it was to keep us humble. Scientists have said their survivability is such that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, roaches would dominate the charred new world. This raises an interesting question:
If we wiped out our world with nuclear bombs and only roaches survived and evolved, would there be, in a gazillion or so years, a roach Jerry Springer Show?
Anyway, we’re infested with three kinds here in the Valley and, reflecting our diversity, they are the German roach, the Turkestan roach and the good old American roach.
Q: My wife swears she saw an opossum the other night while walking the dog in our Mesa neighborhood. I think she was seeing things. Settle our bet. Are there opossums in Arizona?
A: Are there opossums in Arizona? Are you kidding?
Why do you think some parts of the state are uninhabited? There are opossums out there the size of St. Bernards, mutated by the drift from nuclear testing back in the ’50s. Their teeth are as long as car keys, and they are notoriously short-tempered. In 1973, a group of Boy Scouts camping near…
OK, I made that stuff up. I thought it might be more interesting than the real answer, which is: Sort of.
There are opossums in Arizona, although it is highly unlikely that the missus saw one in Mesa. Unlikely, but not impossible.
Arizona’s opossum population mostly confines itself to the area from Tucson south to the border.
Q: Since we moved to Arizona, my daughter and I have become avid hikers. The other day we saw our first rattlesnake. How many kinds of rattlesnakes are there around here?
A: I hate to tell you this, but there are a lot of them. And not just rattlesnakes. There are coral snakes, and a lot of others, including Gila monsters and killer bees. We’re not supposed to call them killer bees anymore. Africanized bees is the term. Call ’em what you like, they’re not nice neighbors.
The good news is your chances of being bitten or stung or otherwise killed by any of these creatures are fairly small, unless you’re a dope or just naturally unlucky. A study a few years ago showed, as I recall, that the primary victims of rattlesnake bites are young, White males who had been drinking. Of course, the primary cause of a lot of problems is young, White males who have been drinking.
