La Ventana Stories

California King Snake

California King Snakes (Lampropeltis californiae) are some of the most powerful snakes in the world. In general, pound for pound, king snakes are the strongest constrictors.

Though they are famous for their ability to eat rattlesnakes and other snakes like Rosy Boas, their usual diet consists of rodents, young birds, lizards and anything else with a tail and a head.

King snakes live in almost every habitat on the Baja California Peninsula, including urban areas, salt flats and sand dunes, but they are extremely rare. My good friend who grew up in La Ventana has never seen one, and it has long been my dream to find one.

Last week, I heard my dad shout “SNAKE!” I was expecting a coachwhip or maybe a gopher snake but, when I got there, I saw my first king snake. I was in shock.

After holding her for a minute, she unfortunately regurgitated a Rosy Boa (regurgitating is a defense mechanism for many snakes, as it makes them lighter and faster, which they hope will help them escape). I was lucky to see a king snake at all, and this was something very special, but there was more to come.

History of La Ventana

Part 2 — The First Settlers

Salomé’s caravan made its way over the dusty trail from La Paz to the palm grove on the Bahia de La Ventana, stopping to camp one night in the mountains. Salomé later commented that he was so weary by the journey’s end that even the hat on his head was too much weight to bear.

Salomé and his sons scoured the surrounding desert for palo de arco and downed cardón trunks to build a shelter. They chose a construction site under a stand of palm trees on the north side of the palmar overlooking the bay and Isla Cerralvo. They used the cardón for the corner posts and roof beams, wove the palo-de-arco walls and plastered them with mud. Then they attached layers of palm fronds to the roof and left the dirt floor bare. This type of shelter, called a  jacal, was standard in many rural communities of Mexico in those times.

A rural Mexican shelter called a jacal.

The home was illuminated with oil lamps and candles, and Salome furnished it with a table, chairs, and beds of cardón cactus tied together with palm rope. A blanket separated the interior into two rooms. Salome’s second wife, Petra, cooked on a metal grate over a wood fire. A typical meal consisted of beans, rice, corn tortillas, and fish. After the men brought goats back from the Island, meals included cheese and meat. The children collected wild fruit and herbs from the desert.

Rosendo Amador, who had herded cattle at Punta Perico with his son Jesus, had already brought his family to the palmar and built their jacal at the south end, where he also dug a well. The two pioneer families relied on each other for survival. The marriage between Jesus Amador Hiraldo and María Teresa León Zazueta, the children of Rosendo and Salomé, would seal the close bond between the two families.

Continue reading “History of La Ventana”

Black-Tailed Brush Lizard

The Black-Tailed Brush Lizard (Urosaurus nigricauda) is a camouflage, adaptive and sneaky reptile that likes to live in trees, rocky areas and, as its name suggests, brush. This is a relatively small lizard that always seems to assume you can’t see it, making it one of the easiest to catch and one of my personal favorites.

Interestingly, at the Sol de Mayo waterfall, I have seen a Black-Tailed Brush Lizard living on a rock next to the river. As I approached, it jumped into the water and swam to the nearest rock. That was the first lizard I have ever witnessed swimming, and willingly, no less! I find this very impressive.

Salomé León and the Founding of La Ventana

For a century and a half, pearl divers repeatedly overfished and abandoned the pearl grounds along the east coast of Baja California. The pearl beds replenished themselves in a few decades before being overfished again. In 1697, when Charles the II learned that license holders spent more time gathering pearls than mapping and searching for settlement sites as the permit required, he rescinded those licenses. When the Jesuits took over administering economic activity on the peninsula, they prohibited pearl collecting for mission workers; others could get permission as long as they paid the Spanish Crown his quinto de perlas, one-fifth of the pearls they found. The Jesuits also suggested payment for themselves of one-tenth.

A century after Spain expelled the Jesuits from Baja, the pearling industry in La Paz took off. Armadores (fishing fleet owners) hired mostly Yaqui Indians from Sonora to dive for pearls. Some Yaqui Indians could dive to 20 fathoms, 120 feet, equipped only with a loincloth, knife, and catch-bag. But deaths from a variety of hazards were high.

Divers in canoes fanned out from the mother ships to dive for the madreperlas (pearl oysters). Many Yaqui divers and their families migrated to La Paz when the Territorial Deputies imposed higher duties on the armadores who hired non-residents divers. That may have included an ancestor of the future co-founder of La Ventana.

Onshore, workers opened the mollusks to look for pearls. Then they cleaned the mother-of-pearl shells and sorted them for export to Europe, where artisans used them to make buttons, inlaid tabletops, and other items. Mother-of-pearl soon brought in more money than the pearls themselves.

In 1874, an Italian and an American arrived in La Paz with diving suits and air pumps that they had used for pearl fishing in the Gulf of Panama. Divers outfitted with this equipment could harvest oyster beds deeper than 80 feet, an extreme limit for most freedivers. They sold pearls for as much as 60 times the cost of collecting them and retired after only six months of work.

As other outfitters began importing similar equipment, La Paz became the pearling capital of the world. Pearl fishing companies usually equipped small fishing boats with an air pump, a buzo (diver), two pump operators, and two rowers. A life-line man helped divers into their heavy diving suits, kept the air hoses untangled, and helped raise the buzo to the surface after a time that depended on the depth reached. It could be an hour or more in shallow waters, but only a short time from sea floors too deep for free diving.

By the early 1900s, business was booming in La Paz, a growing town of some 10,000 people.

Continue reading “Salomé León and the Founding of La Ventana”

Spare the Non-Venomous Snakes!

Apr 6, 2022 – Usually I would have an article all about one specific reptile but, this time, I have a topic that is far more important.

Earlier this week, a friend contacted me saying that there was a snake on his cousin’s farm and they were going to kill it. I got there as soon as possible and, luckily, they had waited for me. It was a harmless and beneficial Cape Gopher Snake that eats mice and keeps the farm from getting rodent-infested. (I have an entire column on Cape Gopher Snakes in the archive.)

This is a real lesson.

Many of the 16-ish non-venomous snake species around La Ventana somewhat resemble venomous rattlesnakes and will do their best to act like rattlesnakes to ward off predators. Unfortunately, since people are so afraid of rattlesnakes, this defensive mimicry has the opposite effect on humans. In other words, rather than warding off human predators, acting like a rattlesnake actually makes people more likely to hurt or kill a snake.

However, there are ways to help. For example, our neighbors are having a house built and I have befriended the workers. They know that I love reptiles so, every time they find one, they let me take it instead of possibly killing it. In this way, I have assisted three sand snakes, two whiptail lizards and many scorpions.

If you find a snake or lizard and don’t know what to do with it, I am more than happy to identify and/or relocate it, which is not ideal but sometimes necessary.

Early Explorers of La Ventana Bay

Pericu Indians

Time: 5,000 years ago. Location: Bufadora and Choco Lake area of present-day Bay of La Ventana. At dawn’s first light, the men started searching for shellfish in the shallows along the shore in front of the shell-midden dunes left by their ancestors. The women finished gathering acorns from the woodland where they had camped for the past moon.  While they prepared the oak seeds for soaking to remove their bitter taste, they discussed moving camp to the base of the mountains where pitaya was ready to harvest.

Illegal destruction of the archaeological site on Lake Choco

A young girl approached the leader and asked her, “Where did our people come from?”  

The old woman repeated the story she had learned from her mother: “Many winters ago, just before dawn on the shortest day of the season, Niparaya descended from the minyikári (sky) on the three stars that form the great hunter’s waist.  He stood on Cerro Del Puerto, the sacred mountain to the west, and created all we need to survive. Pericú is the name he gave us. It means “The People.”

Continue reading “Early Explorers of La Ventana Bay”

Zebra-Tailed Lizard

Zebra-Tailed Lizards (Callisaurus draconoides) are fast, harmless, camouflage reptiles with an accurate name, since the underside of their tails displays a striking black and white-striped design. The males have beautiful belly patterns with blue, orange, black, white and even red colorations.

They are most commonly found on sandy arroyo bottoms and on beaches at the edge where the plants stop, but they will live in many habitats. Around La Ventana, I have witnessed about 10 Zebra-Tailed Lizards in one bush.

They are so incredibly fast that they seem to fly to the nearest safe place and, if there is no cover nearby, they will quickly burrow themselves into the sand and disappear. The only reason I was able to catch the one in the photo was because, when it burrowed itself into the sand, its tail was sticking out.

As for their diet, they eat a lot of butterfly and moth larvae as well as ants, termites and beetles.

Cape Gopher Snake

On the 15th of March, as we were driving home from Hot Springs Beach, I saw what looked like a large shadow stretching across the road. But wait, there was nothing casting the shadow and it was 12:30pm, a time when the sun is high and there are few shadows. How could this be possible?

Well, that is a bit of a trick question. If you know what my columns are about, you can probably guess the answer.

Cape Gopher Snakes (Pituophis vertebralis) are beautiful, big and, in my experience, friendly serpents. They are completely harmless, though they can hiss and shake their tail when threatened, which can be intimidating.

Their coloration is striking. Starting at the head, they have orange-ish bands that fade to black at the tail. The picture below will help to identify them. Gopher snakes can get quite large; the individual in the photo is an impressive 5 feet in length.

As for their diet, they will eat rodents, birds, bird eggs and sometimes even lizards, but I think they prefer rodents. This makes them great for pest control! If you see one of these awesome snakes near your house, I’d say let it stay, as they are harmless. Around here, they are active year round and, interestingly, will be out during the day in both winter and spring, and at night in the summer and fall.

Western Banded Gecko

Western Banded Geckos (Coleonyx variegatus) are crafty, quick and adorable lizards with a striking pattern of yellow, white and black. They are nocturnal and not too common, so you don’t see them very often.
The photo below was taken in March in El Sargento. I found this little guy under an old tarp in a roadside trash heap.
Here in the Cape Region, these geckos don’t really hibernate so you can still see them throughout the winter. During the colder months, they spend most of their time under rocks and trash, and rarely come out, similar to many local snake species.
Western Banded Geckos are generalists, meaning they will take any food opportunities they can get, and will eat most moving things that they can fit in their mouths.

Cape Spiny-Tailed Iguana

The Cape Spiny-Tailed Iguana (Ctenosaura hemilopha) is a large, fast and semi-common lizard living in trees, walls, atop cacti and really anything that can offer a quick escape. These diurnal reptiles disappear at even the hint of danger, from both predators and herpetologists alike, making them a nightmare to catch and, for that reason, I don’t have any pictures of this lizard from the mainland.

Fortunately, these iguanas also live on our neighboring island, Isla Cerralvo. As they have far less predators there, they bask happily right on the ground and seem less offended by the Paparazzi, including me last week when I had the opportunity to visit.

Their diet is mostly plant-based but they will eat insects and even carrion on occasion. Their teeth are meant for ripping leaves but are quite good at ripping skin, too. Iguanas also have a small amount of venom, so avoiding bites is a good idea. And those are not their only defenses! After retreating into a rock crevasse, they will orient their spiny tails at the entrance of the hole and, if you try to extract them… well, let’s just say that a spine under the fingernail can be very painful.