Wallking Dead (almost) in New Mexico

I didn't mean to pull his leg off. I just didn't want him to crawl up my pants.

I blame the city of Las Cruces.

It all started because we were looking for a roadrunner made out of trash. We had passed it many times on I-10, just before Las Cruces. Usually, we wouldn't remember it until we had passed the rest area exit and saw it standing in the orange dirt, too late to go back.

This time we remembered it and pulled into the rest area in time, parked and went in search of the roadrunner. We thought it was strange that there were no signs for it or pathways marked out. Just a bunch of hilly, hot desert.

We set off for the direction we thought it might be in, walking up hill and valley in the blazing sun.

The area was pretty, and the desert has so many interesting plants and animals, but why, in the name of pasty skin, does it have to be so hot?

We never found the trashy roadrunner. Maybe it had all been some sort of desert hallucination.

This is the view from the
supposed home
of the elusive trashy roadrunner.

After walking for minutes hours and not finding it, we got back in the truck and continued east. I got on the computer to find out where we went wrong when I felt something crawling on my arm.

It was a lime green Walking Stick, about 2 inches long. They are so weird/cool looking and he was moving pretty fast. I put him on my finger and let him walk around, trying to take pictures at the same time. It was awkward, so I put him back on the computer and let him walk around the keyboard, but it was too sunny in the front of the truck so I moved to the back.

He was a very good natured Walking Stick, if a little hyper. He perched himself up on the USB magic internet stick and kind of swayed around on his six feet. Later, I read that that was a defensive mechanism, he was trying to mimic a twig swaying in the breeze.

I could almost hear him whistling and saying, "nothing to see here folks, I'm just a computer twig, swaying in the breeze of the a/c. Move along."

I picked him up again to play with him some more to get some better pictures and that's when he fell on my foot and then crawled up my pant leg.

And that's when I freaked out and tore his leg off by accident, because it's one thing to be playing with a Walking Stick out in the open, but it's a whole other ball of worms to have one crawling up your leg when you can't see it.

Because when a harmless Walking Stick that you have been playing with for 15 minutes goes missing in your pants, it immediately turns into a venomous bitey Chupacabra. As everyone knows.

I drew in a fake leg for him.
He wasn't impressed.

I felt really bad about it so I took some more pictures before we stopped. Then I put him on some kind of desert bush next to a truck stop to live out the rest of his life with only 5 legs.

And that's how the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico ruined my day.

And it was no picnic for the Walking Stick either, I'm sure.

Now that I think about it, the bush looked like an oleander, which are highly poionous to humans. Hopefully, not to Walking Sticks.

Weird Walking Stick Fact:

When mating, Walking Sticks generally remain coupled from 3-36 hours, after...uh...completion, and in extreme cases may remained coupled for 3 weeks. Who do they think they are, Sting?