It felt like walking into a horror movie: an abandoned trailer loaded with filth, tattered furniture, and mounds of newspapers clinging to the grandiose hinterlands of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. And then there was the massive, unfathomable pile of giant kangaroo rat carcasses.
Another dilapidated trailer sits 40 feet away. For years, these two structures at the base of the Panorama Hills have served as prime real estate for nesting ravens and barn owls, two species that despise one another.
They are surrounded by walls of wooden pallets, ideal refuges for western Pacific rattlesnakes. In the spring and summer, I'm always aware of where I put my hands and feet as I creep up on them.
