Trust me when I say that one of the most dangerous and foolish things you can do while visiting Arizona is experiment with Icy Hot® as a sexual lubricant. But what’s perhaps even more reckless is visiting Arizona and stepping into its wilderness with no knowledge of the critters residing therein.
Only a top-shelf turbo-dickhead enters the desert wilds without at least a basic understanding of what they might encounter, and that’s why for this special Arizona issue of POSSESSED we called up ultra runner, animal lover, and Arizona field technician Aaron Van Geem. Aaron would be the first to tell you he isn’t a wildlife expert, but as a field technician who spends a hell of lot of time in the bush collecting data, he’s seen pretty much everything that can bite you in the G. C. State. As it turns out (spoiler alert), humans are the most dangerous critters in the woods, and the other little critters don’t want nuthin’ to do with us.
Rattlesnakes
Okay, Aaron. Rattlesnakes. Where are they, and how can I avoid them?
Well, rattlesnakes are probably the most worrisome thing for runners and hikers in Arizona. They’re everywhere. Their range covers all of Arizona. I’m not exactly sure how many different species there are, but in Southern Arizona there’s, like, thirteen. If you head north to Flagstaff, they have maybe four species of rattlesnake.
How many rattlesnakes have you personally encountered?
So many I couldn’t tell you. They’re everywhere, all over Arizona, but you’re only going to see them when it’s warmer, between 75–90°F (23–32°C). Anything above 90° is gonna be too hot, and anything below 75° will be too cold. So, in the early morning or evening in summertime, your chances of seeing a rattlesnake are pretty high. But when the temperature isn’t right, they’re gonna be hidden under a rock somewhere.
Is the rattle loud?
Yeah, pretty loud. I’ve heard them from fifteen to twenty feet away. But then, sometimes, they don’t rattle at all...
Best not to run with headphones, then?
Yeah, that would be one thing to consider. They make the rattle sound to warn you that you’re too close, but then you’re probably already too close by the time they rattle.
Snake encounters are weird.
Yeah! And then afterward, everything looks like a snake, like sticks and tree roots. You see snakes everywhere. Everything becomes a snake. It’s too much.
Are rattlesnake bites bad?
Yes, they are. *
*(Rattlesnake bite symptoms include extreme pain and swelling at the bite site, excessive bleeding, nausea, swelling in the mouth and throat, light-headedness, drooling, collapse, and shock.)
Scorpions
Scorpions. What are they doing?
Scorpions are all over Southern and Northern Arizona. There are two main kinds that I know of. The big ones—I’m not sure exactly what they’re called, but I feel like they’re just Common Scorpions or Desert Scorpions—they don’t really hurt you; it’s like getting stung by a bee. The smaller ones, though, are the Arizona Bark Scorpions, and those things pack more of a punch.
What happens if you get stung by an Arizona Bark Scorpion?
Well, I’ve heard it compared to a Black Widow bite. So, it’s not the end of the world if you get bit by one. Like, if I was on a backpacking trip, I might consider heading back to my car. It depends on how you’re feeling. I think you could ride out a Bark Scorpion sting, but I wouldn’t test it.
Does the venom fuck you up, like, will you hyperventilate or froth at the mouth?
It can be pretty bad (breathing difficulties, involuntary muscle contractions, blurred vision, double vision, nausea, vomiting, sweating, fever, high heart rate, and trouble swallowing) but I don’t think it would kill you unless you were really old or you had some other medical issue that could become compounded by the sting. A healthy adult is going to live to tell the tale... But it will ruin your day or a couple of days.
When are they out and about?
They only come out at night, so if you’re a runner, your only worry is if you stop to sit on a rock at night and there happens to be a scorpion already there. Or you’re camping out and sleeping on the ground, then you might meet one.
And always check your shoes before putting them on.
Yes. Definitely.
Tarantulas
Are tarantulas a thing in Arizona?
Yeah, tarantulas are out there for sure, but they’re not gonna do anything to you. Even if they bite you, it’s just like a pinch.
Have you seen them?
Yeah, so many.
Are they big?
The Grand Canyon Black Tarantula can get pretty big, like, maybe four inches across. They’re super cool.
And they can’t really hurt you?
Not really. Bite symptoms are pretty mild. They are freaky, though. You don’t really want a giant spider walking over you while you’re sleeping.
Gila Monsters
Okay, how about Gila monsters? Will they kill me?
They’re a really special reptile. They only come out seasonally. You might see them as early as April and May, and they’ll stick around for the hotter seasons.
Will they kill me, though?
Well, they’re venomous, but they’re super slow and pretty easy to see. They have this really beautiful orange and black speckled skin. They’re pretty big, though.
Like, how big?
Like, nearly two feet long. I don’t know what would happen if you got bit by one. I’d probably go to the hospital though. * You rarely see them; I’ve only seen a few, and they’re always slowly sauntering along. If you leave them alone, they won’t bite you. But they’re really pretty, and you should think yourself lucky if you see one.
*(A Gila Monster bite can cause severe pain, swelling, vomiting, dizziness, weakness, dangerous drop in blood pressure, loss of erection, swelling in the airways, and difficulty breathing.)
Jaguars
What about jaguars? Is that a thing?
Yeah, there’s jaguars in Southern Arizona, but there’s not many.
Are they endangered?
Yeah, definitely endangered for The United States. I’m not sure about their numbers in Mexico. Their range goes up into Southern Arizona, parts of Texas, and I want to say some parts of Southern California. Historically, those areas have had jaguars, but they’ve been hunted and pushed out.
How many are left?
Well, the ones who have traveled back into the U.S.—at least in Arizona—as far as I know, have all been males. So, they can’t reproduce...
Just a bunch of dudes out there.
A bunch of dude jaguars up in Arizona.
How many we talkin’?
I think there’s probably three.
Three?!
There are maybe four jaguars in Arizona, total. In 2018, I was in Sonora, Northern Mexico, where I worked on a jaguar reserve. I was up there for three months, and there were a ton of jaguars in the reserve. They weren’t fenced in or anything; they could come and go as they pleased, but the habitat up there was really nice for jaguars. We were doing a lot of camera-trap monitoring, you know, collecting data, and I would camp out for ten days at a time in this reserve that had a lot of jaguars in it, and I never saw a single jaguar.
Not one?
Nope. None.
And it was a jaguar reserve filled with jaguars?
Yeah, and the people who had been working on the project for ten years, living at the jaguar sanctuary for a decade, they hadn’t seen a jaguar either.
So, no one involved had actually seen a jaguar.
No, but this is just to hammer home that jaguars are super-elusive and shy and purely nocturnal, and they’re going to smell and hear you coming way, way, way before you get anywhere near them, and they’ll move away and hide somewhere where you can’t find them.
Jaguars are cool.
Yeah. And they’re never going to bother you on your run.
Mexican Wolves
Hey, pinche guey, what about Mexican wolves? Are they gonna eat me?
I’m not super well-versed on Mexican wolves. I did work with a woman who had experience working with them, and she loved them. They’re a little bit smaller than a wolf you’d see in Wyoming or Montana, and they’re really only in this one area of Arizona: the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, which stretches down to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Between the two states, there’s a rehabilitation center for Mexican wolves, and I think they’ve had a pretty tough time.
How?
It’s proving a little harder to rehabilitate them than, say, the wolves in Yellowstone or something like that. I’ve never worked with them, but from what I’ve heard, it’s been hard for them to get Mexican wolf numbers back up. So, if you see a Mexican wolf, you should consider yourself very lucky. I’ve never seen or heard one, and I’ve been up in Apache-Sitgreaves, and I’ve done a lot of surveys and things inside the rehabilitation center, and I’ve never even heard a Mexican wolf howling at night.
Mountain Lions
Let’s talk about mountain lions.
Mountain lions are all over the place.
And they are dangerous, surely. *
I actually saw a mountain lion on the Saddles 100 course in the middle of the night.
No shit?
Yeah, it was just standing there on the side of the trail.
How far from the side of the trail?
Like, five feet.
Yikes.
It was just kinda crouched down in the grass. My headlamp caught its eyes, and I thought maybe it was a fox, but then it started moving, and I could make out how big it was. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that’s a lot bigger than a fox.'
Did you immediately stop when you saw it?
Yeah, I stopped and looked at it for a moment and was like, ‘Yeah, that’s definitely a mountain lion,’ and I kinda just backed away from it. I didn’t turn my back on it; I just backed away until it was out of sight. But mountain lions are super cool, and they don’t typically pose a threat. It’s another animal where you should feel lucky if you see one.
Hmm...
But unlike shy jaguars, mountain lions are a little more curious, so they’ll poke their heads out sometimes if they hear something they don’t understand. They’re cats, y’know? I’ve talked with runners who have said, ‘Oh my god, I got stalked by a mountain lion,’ but if they were really being stalked, they wouldn’t know about it. If you see the mountain lion, it is not stalking you.
It’s just curious what you’re up to.
Yeah. It just wants to check what you’re all about. Mountain lions rely completely on surprise when they’re hunting. Once you’ve seen it, it’s lost its advantage and it’s not gonna do anything. I mean, it does happen once in a while where you hear about a mountain lion attacking someone, but they’re more likely to run away.
*(death by mountain lion happens with less frequency than fatal lightning strikes... that said, between 20 and 43 are killed by lightning in the U.S. every year, so...)
Vampire Bats
Got any vampire bats?
No, but there are a lot of bats.
How many bats?
Tons of them, but they won’t hurt you.
Okay...
There are black bears, though.
No way.
Way.
Black Bears
Are you serious?
Yeah, in the mountains there’s black bears. In the higher elevations, there are little pockets populated by bears. And all through Southern and Northern Arizona, you could run into a bear.
And they will fuck you up. *
Well, I’ve had a few run-ins with bears and they always just run away. They don’t really try to stick around. Like, I’ve run into them in narrow canyons where there’s not a lot of options for them to run away, and they still just run away.
Okay, so you’ve gotta be super-unlucky if you get attacked by one; you’d have to accidentally corner one for it to freak out.
Well, I’ve actually done that.
Really?
Yeah, I accidentally pushed a black bear to the edge of a cliff. I could hear it ahead of me in the brush, and it was clicking its jaw—which is how they warn you that they feel threatened—but it was my job to move through this area and get to this other area, so I was like, ‘Well, I better keep going.’ At one point, I realized I was just pushing this bear closer and closer to the edge of a cliff.
Oh dear.
Yeah, and then it started roaring and I slowly backed away. I never even saw it, but I could hear it. And there was bear poop all over the place.
*(There have been two fatal bear attacks in Arizona since 1990)
Chupacabras
Do chupacabras ever make their way across the border from Mexico and into Arizona?
Oh, gosh, yes, they do.
Really?
Yeah, the chupacabras are all over. And you gotta watch out—especially at night. You think you’re sleeping alone, and then you wake up with a chupacabra in your sleeping bag next to you.
I heard about that. They finally figured out zippers and can actually come into your tent, right?
Oh yeah. But you know what animal people never think about when they go trail running in Arizona?
What?
Actually, there are two. Can I talk about two more animals?
Yeah, of course.
Well, the first one is javelinas.
Javelinas
What in the world is a javelina?
The javelina is basically Southern Arizona’s wild pig, but it’s not a pig. Technically, it’s a ‘Peccary’.
A Peccary?
Yeah, they’re native to North America and they’ll roam the hillsides in huge numbers, oftentimes with little babies. They can reproduce any time of year, so they’ll often have young with them, and if you somehow corner them or separate the young from the parents, they can charge you.
You can get charged by a javelina.
Yeah, and they can get pretty big, like a big, burly...
Volkswagen?
No, a big, burly pig. I’ve personally had them square up at me on the trail, but they’ve never charged me. They can be mean, but usually they’re just super cute.
Okay, good to know. Now, what’s the final deadly critter?
This last one is really cool: Coatimundis.
Coatimundis
I’ve never heard of a coatimundi.
They’re really cool. They’re in the same family as raccoons and ringtail cats. They’re the size of a small dog, but they have a long tail and a long nose, and like the javelina, they travel in huge packs. Like, you’ll see twenty of them.
Will they kick a man’s ass?
They can be defensive, but it’s really very rare for them to attack humans. I’ve seen dogs in Mexico with huge scars on their faces from coatimundi attacks.
No shit.
Yeah, but they’re a really cool animal to see when you’re running around, and they really don’t pose a threat to humans. But if your dog ran off into a pack of coatimundis...
They’ll kick its ass.
Yeah, it would be a pretty bad day for the dog.
Okay, I think I’m good to enter the Arizona wilderness now. Thanks, Aaron Van Geen!
You got it!
