r/Lizards

Hi, last week I did something I’ve been promising myself for several years. Instead of driving from Los Angeles to look for birds in Southeast Arizona, I deliberately ignored the birds and spent several days in Tucson in a dedicated search only for Gila Monster. Why am I writing about that here?

1. Tuesday night a week ago I was walking around in the late afternoon at Sabino Canyon looking unsuccessfully for Gila Monsters, but this lady saw my camera and binoculars and walked up to me and told me about a desert tortoise that she had just seen. Her description of where to look for it was great and I would’ve never gone on that particular trail so I would’ve never seen it and later on I realized that they had split the ones in Arizona and Mexico into a separate species from the ones in California, so that was a new species for me. I wish I could go back and thank that lady who was a local, for telling me about that tortoise. I really appreciate it.
2. That same night in Sabino Canyon I was shining my UV flashlight on a scorpion and some random dude walked up to me and he looked at the scorpion while I was photographing it in the dark, and I was explaining to him why I was in Tucson for the week, and he told me about this excellent spot in Saguaro National Park. I went to that part of the park the next morning and talked with some employees there, and they told me where to look for Gila Monsters, but they also told me that none had been seen since May. Even then, they gave me a map and highlighted the best spots to look for them and I came back in the afternoon and finally at 8 o’clock at night I saw one. It was a gigantic thrill for me. I’m so stoked that now I have a stuffed, life-sized Gila Monster from the National Park gift shop riding around in the back window of my Toyota. so if you’re ever in Los Angeles, and you see a life-sized Gila Monster in the back window of somebody’s car, you’ll know that’s me. Thank you, Tucson!