Saturday, April 28, 2007

Chuckwalla Crossing

I hiked up Camelback Mountain this morning, and saw my first Chuckwalla. I was hiking along Cholla Trail, along the spine, up near the summit, and I came across this giant lizard (probably 14-16 inches1). The thing really startled me as I looked up just in time to see him scurry into a crevice not 3-4 feet in front of me. I probably would have put my hand on that crevice had I not seen him lurking there.

I kept going up to the top, but returned on my way back down, and to my surprise, he had come back out, and was sunning himself on the rock. I got a few good pictures of him on my cell phone, but I don't know how to transfer them to my computer (where's Colman when I need him?). The Chuckwalla pictured here is a little smaller, and less colored than the one I saw today.

I will say this - I have yet to see a Chuckwalla at the rock gym!

6 comments:

Carlos said...

I had a friend that lived in Chuckawala, WA, but I think he moved to Seattle. He was sort of a scaley sort of guy. Weird eyes.

robyn said...

I would have probably screamed, based on last week when we walked in the house and Nathan burped. I not sure what I thought the noise was, but I screamed.

Anonymous said...

Chuck•wall•a (def) noun: One perfectly good reason to keep exercise confined within the walls of a gym, where there are treadmills and TVs and air conditioning.

Scrap Happy said...

Oh, that last comment was me, not Nick, as you all have probably figured out.

Ingelheim Five said...

Reminds me of hiking in the Petroglyphs with the YW one afternoon and coming upon a rattlesnake sunning itself on the path. Wouldn't have been nearly so scary except one of the YW ran up to it saying, "Take my picture!"

She was a nice girl too...

Aubrey said...

When I read Nick's comment I thought... wow, that's really witty for Nick. HAHA!

Also, Cam - email the pictures to yourself and then post them (should be able to add your email address in contacts). I want to see the real thing!