Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

This land of nocturnal wonder.

I don't mean the pothold parking lots of Yucca Valley and its 90% vacant commercial and retail strip. But not the traffic jam getting out of the National Park

once the sun goes down.

Not too much wonder within such scenes, although just looking up from your phone can give you a glimpse into another world.

I walked outside with my coffee and a book the other day, and the enormous gopher snake that lives under the house was in repose in the shade.

A foot-long bulge in its belly about halfway down, wherever they keep the belly on a snake.

This old snake knows me pretty well and did not budge, so I sat down on the porch and opened the book, but it was hard to get back into it.

With the new mystery so strongly upon my mind right in front of me,

who did the gopher snake eat?

The reality of knowing the wild animals on your land is knowing that they generally

live on an accelerated timeline.

The new crop of Mojave cotton tails and rock squirrels each spring will shrink to one or two lucky buddies by late summer.

With the rest of them succumbing to reckless road crossings and redtail hawks and rattlesnakes, the local ravens, feasting on the remains, if there are any.

Was that a rock squirrel slowly digesting within this six-foot-long yellow and chocolate-colored

gopher snake? A pack rat, a wood rat, a morning dove.

A gopher snake, which can be any of the nine subspecies, endemic to North America,

is a great friend to the homesteader, keeping not only the rodents in check, including the various

mice who carry the hantavirus, but also claiming territory from rattlers in your vicinity,

which have their role in the world, of course, but it's foolish to let rattlers get comfortable

around your habitation let them work the back acreage the back country or the one weird neighbor's

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