As a closure of Saten’s articles on farming at Rancho Rajneesh, some gossip about four-, two-, and no-legged inhabitants
Rattlesnakes patrol
I don’t know how many of us were assigned this duty, but rattlesnakes were everywhere on the Ranch. I was given a pager, a squeegee and a garbage bin to carry in the back of my pickup at all times. Whenever one came into our work spaces, I would get paged.
The method was to use the squeegee to pin down the snake right behind the head. You were then meant to reach down and pick it up by the head. (As we usually caught them on gravelly ground, you always worried that you might not have such a snug grasp with the squeegee as you leant in to pick it up by the head!) Then drop the snake in the rubbish bin, drive over to the canyon north of the main valley, and let it go…
I can still remember those shaky hands when I started that duty….
One story on this: One day I came to my desk in Dadu office, which was then in the field off the west side of the boutique, to find a rattlesnake curled around my underdesk trash bin…
This post reaped a few comments from readers. Here a few:
Navina: I was lying down by the river during tea break one time and felt this weird thing on my legs, and one was crawling right over my outstretched legs. I didn’t move and he just went on his way – but the strangest feeling!
Vinod: I saw Neehar remove a rattler the way you say Saten, near Pythagoras. Another story: I also saw what a bite could do to an arm! A festival visitor thought he could communicate with a rattler he met near Patanjali Lake. He picked it up and got bitten. He received the antivenom by our ambulance crew. But what a horrifying sight that extremely swollen arm was!
Deirdre: After the Ranch, when I lived in the foothills of the sierras, the property had a rattlesnake den amongst old-looking moss-covered rocks. The property owner told us that he was seeing them periodically over the years living there. I did some research and found out that the snakes live in these dens for decades and that by removing them, it can actually threaten their lifespan.
Swans and coyotes
A post about the swans in the lakes at the bottom of B-Site, and wily coyotes.
We spent considerable trouble to build two six-foot fences (with juniper logs and electric wires, spaced four inches apart) around the two lakes at the bottom of B-site, to place the swans in an enclosure. The lakes were the ones on either side of the road over the culvert, where Osho would drive as he went coming and going from his ride.
Very shortly afterwards we got a report (I think Shraddhan was involved) that there was a swan missing. We thought: impossible! After a very thorough examination of the whole fence line, we found a trail of feathers up and over the fence on a six-inch section at the end of the wire run, where the electric wires had accidentally not been kept live… We marveled that coyotes must have tested the whole bloody fence to find that dead section! So the crew made that bit live too.
Things went well for a while, until we started to see swans missing again. The coyotes must have really gotten a taste for swan, because we discovered that at least one coyote had figured out how to use the small plastic insulators on each post as toe grips to run up and over the fence and to return the same way… leaving a trail of swan feathers. We ended up having to go to each post and each insulator and run a separate electric wire to eliminate that issue.
The intelligence of coyotes is remarkable…
These notes were first published as Facebook posts in a closed group for Ranch Residents. They are being re-published in Osho News with Saten’s permission. Edited and curated by Navina and Osho News. Stockphoto thanks to Duncan Sanchez on Unsplash
Related articles
- Dryland Farming in Oregon – Experiments and innovative ideas thanks to brilliant minds coming together in Dadu farming on the Ranch. Part 1 of Saten’s notes
- Boys (and girls) love machines! – In Part 2 of his notes, Saten reminisces on the faithful machines used for all farming chores
- The evolution of our greenhouses – Saten recollects the successful, and less successful, experiments in our farming practices in Oregon (Part 3)
- Planting in Surdas – Saten’s notes and photos about the planning for the following season in the truck farm (Part 4)
- The irrigation dance – Solutions for an all-year-round crop in Oregon. Notes by Saten (Part 5)
- Alfa-Alfa / The Enlightenment Saga – Two chapters from Arjava’s memoir, Still… Here and Now: Growing Wings in Osho’s Garden, this time from the Oregon era
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