Position open: Mountain Goat and Snake Wrangler

Sometimes, on rare occasions, I am called into duty to leave the safety and sanctity of my little desk and am forced into the field to assist those capable guys we call Applicators. My expertise does not include applicating so I am usually relegated to pulling hoses and washing flagstone. Most of you know we have a weed control company and this requires spraying a liquid material on all places where the customer does not want weeds to grow. If it gets on something we don't want it on, such as flagstone (it has a temporary color), it has to be immediately washed off. That's my job. Sometimes we get a doozy of a job. Today was one of those days.

Go to Paradise Valley, into one of the most exclusive gated communities, follow the guards instructions and drive the winding road to the very top of the mountain. Sometimes I think that intelligence can be calculated by the amount of money a person has. The more they have the dumber they are. Well, that's not exactly right. It's the amount of money a person has and what they will spend it on. This was a six thousand plus square foot house perched into the side of the mountain. Many parts of it hanging out into space. One of our problems was that it was surrounded by an acre of tile that had been shipped from Italy specifically for this house. When I first saw this tile I thought it had been damaged as it had deep white scratches in it. Then I noticed that they all had deep white scratches in them. I wondered what it cost to ship damaged tile from Italy. Then I wondered why the customer didn't just buy some undamaged tile right here. I've lots of friends with tile. Thank God none of theirs is damaged.

We had to spray the mountain side around the house, down the steep mountain side on either side of the road well before and well past the house. This was no mean feat. Standing halfway down the mountain side, holding the hose I looked out at a beautiful view of Paradise Valley and as I slipped and slid in the mountain shale I looked at the house and wondered if the view was worth spending 6 million dollars to precariously perch the house on a really butt ugly scrub desert and nasty shale mountain. The property manager said this job kept her hopping because the house kept shifting. Huh! Shifting? Really?

And, what do you do with the kids? Junior go out back and play. Try not to fall 600 feet down the mountain again, honey.

And, there was a huge rattlesnake sunning himself on the narrow walkway at the side of the house that went straight down. And, I'm talking huge. Huge! No, really! Huge! Coiled and blocking the way. Unfortunately my friend John was leading the way. John doesn't like snakes. Saying John doesn't like snakes is like saying the surface of the sun is slightly warm. I'm not sure the human larynx was designed to emit the sound that came from John.

I know that Jesus walked on water, but my friend John must be able to walk on thin air. How else did he get around me. There was no room. And yet before I could react he was up the path and backing toward the street making a strange, agonizing sound. I didn't know until today that snakes could laugh.