My “friends” in Tucson are constantly shitting on Phoenix –” it’s so hot”. (Pussies, it’s about 2- 5 degrees warmer). But I can tell you one thing we don’t have — critters.

Phoenix has sprawled across a wide, flat, alluvial plain. We plowed over the farmland to cover it in asphalt and red tile roofs. Created a vast heat island that drives away clouds, rain and the hippie assholes from down south (Tucson). Hardly a coyote, a bunny or a javelina has survived. Cut off by block walls and cars speeding by at 55 mph on the 6-lane roads that are perfectly paved and spaced one mile apart.

But Tucson has built into the foothills, with trails and open space and little rolling hills split between washes. Roads are narrow, beat to shit and slow. Critters come and go as they please.

Javelina stop traffic. Coyotes jump block walls and kill cats and small dogs. At night, owls prop themselves on the handrails along the walking trails. Or you might get a visit from some scary little fucker — like this one.

We see that shit in Phoenix, we get Karen to call the fire department or the police, or the goddamn national guard.

In Tucson, they just push the husband at it with a stick. Like this.

You know those people are really good at handling snakes. Sure you might guess by the compression socks and white T-shirt, those people is racist for hispanic. Sure it could be a middle-age man playing the role of suburban “cholo” or the early elderly fighting a blood flow issue…

But it’s not racist – in this case, those people is a semi-spanish speaking dude named Shad — and there is only one of those.

I say he’s semi-spanish speaking, because his wife, ole’ what’s her name, told me he can only speak Spanish one way.

“He can only yell in Spanish. He yells at the same volume if he is shouting across a yard, or yelling into the phone in his car.”

Shad got the snake. Maybe it’s because he runs a landscape business and deals with it all the time? Maybe he is a little crazy? But definitely it’s because he has a plate in his head, and he doesn’t always think straight.

Not sure why he has a snake catching stick and a black “snake can” at the ready? Maybe he has caught these snakes in his yard before? I’ve heard once one snake comes, others will follow. I don’t know, we really don’t have snakes in Gilbert.

Once you have caught the thing, what to do, what to do?

“I’ll drop it in Kevin’s mailbox,” Shad said quietly (in English). “He’s scared shitless of snakes.”