STINGRAY BAY

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Another Shot of Mexico. This is a little sandy bay we have always called "Sting Ray Bay." The lone house on it is never occupied. There is a crescent of white sand in front of the house. No other houses are anywhere near it. There are few people in this area.

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November 22-25, 1990 Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

It was Thanksgiving Day. I got up a five in the morning and got ready to go to Mexico. Jan came by, and we packed the car and stuff. Larry and Nancy came by and we waited for Steve and Sherry, who came twenty minutes late. Finally, we left at 7:00.

I had to take Noodles. I left a lot of grain and water for the pigeons. We stopped at Vasquez Liquors and bought some rum.

Steve stopped in town (Puerto Peñasco) for something and Jan and I continued with Larry and Nancy following. I missed the turn-off and asked directions near Perryville. The Mexicans told me exactly where I was and told me to turn right at the cement mixer. I got to the beach house easily.

We sang some songs until nine o’clock. Then we went to bed. In the morning Larry and Nancy and Noodles and I went to Stingray Bay and looked at pelicans and ospreys diving in the water. Dad followed us and threw a dead Merganser in the water. I took some pictures of the midden heaps and of a creosote bush that Dad needed as an illustration for his book. A dog, a little one, which I had fed earlier was waiting for us at Ruben’s house there. It had snapped at me as I fed it earlier after thanksgiving dinner. I ran it off before. Now, the little bugger was going for Noodles. I kicked dirt at it and threw some beer, but that did not deter it. I then threw the entire beer in front of it (half a beer, anyway), and it split.

We sat around the fire with the Holmes and I played guitar for them for quite a while. Jordan, who married Holly Holmes, sat around the fire with Steve and me until the late hours. I talked about the delicious dog meat that one could get at Kennel Farms. He would always laugh at my stupid jokes, so I kept talking.

We went fishing, but Steve’s motor conked out right away. Jan caught a flounder at the point. So did Larry. I caught two trigger fish and a pinto bass. Steve caught something, too.

We took the engine back and Jan found that the spark plug was fouled with a single strand of carbon between the spark gap. It ran great afterwards. The next day we took the boat out and the leather jackets started running a bit. We caught eight of them. Jan caught most of them on the cast master that he had bought for that express purpose. I caught quite a few trigger fish. They were schooling under the boat at the rocks nearest the point. Steve left the boat after a while to check on the baby and Jan and I went back out. Then, we saw him and Sherry on shore and let them have the boat. Dad came along with Noodles, so I took Noodles and he went with Steve on the boat. Before he left, he showed me a dead pelican and I also saw a dead porpoise on the beach. Dad caught a trigger fish.

Jan drank too much rum just before we had shrimp dinner. He loved the dinner but had not recollection of it whatever the next day. I remember him commenting on the way the shrimp had been prepared, but he couldn’t remember anything about it the next day.

In the morning Jan and I went and got the porpoise off the beach. I had made a nifty little sled with a flat sheet of plywood through which I bored a half-inch hole. I tied a piece of nylon rope through the hole, and Jan and I pulled the porpoise back to the house. It was only a 150-pound porpoise. I buried it behind the house after I taped its teeth in. The teeth always fall right out when the animal rots. I also cut off the dead pelican’s head and filled its mouth pouch with sand until it bulged mightily. Then, I propped its mouth open with a stick. We became friends. I put the whole mess under an orange crate and topped it with a sheet of wood to keep out the rain and a big cinder block on top to keep the wind from knocking everything over. It’ll dry and when I dump out the sand, I’ll have a colossal display of a pelican with distended jowls.

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This is a good place to be.

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     There are various brotherhoods and fellowships.... sisterhoods also, at Estero Morua.  One exclusive club is composed of those people who knew the late José Espinoza.  Another has a membership roll on which we are glad to remain unlisted.  That is the group of select individuals who have fallen victim to stingrays.  No thanks.  We are not interested in joining that elite fraternity.  Perhaps an American history buff might be eager to pledge, for Captain John Smith was admitted to the Chesapeake Bay chapter in June, 1608.
Turning to the pages of a guide written by Don Thomson and the late Nonie McKibbin, we find there are ten species of rays in the Sea of Cortez.  These are flattened relatives of the sharks, but unlike those streamlined hunters, their teeth are not a threat to us.  Somewhere along the top of a long whip-like tail is born a sharp and serrated spike or spine that can be driven into the foot or leg of an unwary human wader.  The results are undesirable, for the spine is venomous.
     Two species of stingray are seen most often along the sandy shores of our beach.  One seems a huge black shadow as it moves with the incoming tide westward along the beach and around the point into the estuary, where it feeds.  A few hours later as the tide falls, the rays reverse the pattern and swim back out to the Gulf waters.  We then see the pits in the exposed bottom sediments that mark the places where these bottom feeders dislodge worms, molluscs and crustaceans with he flapping of their fins... pectoral fins that are hardly distinguishable from the rest of their flat bodies.  This is a stingray belonging to the genus Dasyatis ;  it is the longtail diamond stingray.  One dead individual that washed up on the beach in____ measured___ feet from "wingtip to wingtip" and was ____feet long from its snout to the end of its tail!
The other common ray is far less conspicuous.  This is the round stingray, Urolophus.  It is about the size of a pancake, although the big ones are 15 inches in diameter and have a tail more than nine inches long.  Its tail cannot be considered whip-like;  it is strong and muscular with a dangerous spine near a little dorsal fin about half way out from the base..  Each day many move into the sandy shallows as the water begins to rise with the incoming tides.  This is a dangerous time to wade carelessly out from shore.  It is this smaller, camouflaged griddle-cake that is the villain in most stingray incidents at Estero Morua.  Nearly buried in the sand, it is easily overlooked and stepped on by the unwary.  The sadder-but-wiser waders can be spotted as they shuffle along, hardly raising their feet.  They have learned the consequences of stepping on the posterior third of the round stingray.  They know the ]muscular tail can snap sideways and drive the venomous spine without mercy.
     There are many stories, some almost legendary, about the stingray encounters at the beach.  We can contribute little of originality here.  Three or four times we have seen waders turn and hop rapidly toward the shore, one foot held high.  When asked what's wrong, in all instances the answer was, "I think a crab got me!"  A crab wound, however, is delightful when compared to a stingray puncture.  Victims of the latter learn the true meaning of pain;  they are cold with pain;  they shiver with pain;  it seems like endless and unbearable pain.
     The first time we saw the hopping I-think-a-crab-nailed-me phenomenon was while camping on Sandy Beach, beyond Puerto Peñasco.  The victim was our guest, a student on spring break from a small, respected Ohio college.  We soon realized that he was in serious trouble and we drove him into Puerto Peñasco for medical attention.  The doctor's treatment involved administering a massive dose of drugs that masked the pain.  We have since snickered about this, and for many years we recounted the even and said irreverently, "He saw Jesus coming over the dunes on a camel, but he felt no pain."  (This was remarkable because the young man had not been brought up in the Christian faith!)  The medical treatment, unfortunately, had not destroyed the stingray venom.  Therefore, when the drugs' effects wore off, the victim experienced more than a day of intense pain. 
Since that camping event, we have learned of treatments that can change more than 24 hours (perhaps 48 hours) of pain into an hour or two of discomfort.  These  methods involve destroying the protein or proteins that compose the venom.  The protein is denatured, to borrow the word biochemists use to describe the gross modification of a protein molecule.  Occasionally administering meat tenderizer at the wound site has some effect, but the most effective method involves heat.  If the "stingee" is lucky, he or she was stung on the foot or ankle.  Sweat stands out on the victim's head.  Cooking the venom destructively involves cooking the foot, or so it seems to witnesses and recipients of the treatment.  It is worth it, however.  Soaking for 30 minutes to an hour and a half may do the trick.  Relief is blessedly quick when compared to what Nature had in store for the victim.  (As we look back over this paragraph, we are sure a physician would criticize some omissions.  He would have used a sterile saline solution to irrigate the wound, a rather serious wound, for the removal of the stinging spine does damage;  he would have picked out fragments of the spine's integument, for they are a source of venom;  and he would have disinfected the wound before starting to denature the venom á là hot water.
     One experience with the longtail diamond stingray is shared by many people of the fishing clan at Estero Morua and once it happened to me, although I can't claim membership within that clan.  The tide was up in the estuary;  the big dasyatids had come in to feed.  I spotted one close to shore in a pool just west of Betty Point and cast, in a unskilled manner, the lure and fiddler- crab bait close to it.  The big ray struck and then Pandemonium broke loose as it turned and shot away from the shore at top speed.  The result was a snapped line and a lost-forever Cast Master lure.  Others have confessed to the same imprudence.
The stingrays at Estero Morua are ovoviviparous.  Their eggs hatch within the mother's body and she gives birth to well-developed little fish.  This method of reproduction is underscored by a story Steve told me.  His anecdote also underscores people's attitude toward the stingray in general.  Not one onlooker cried, "Don't be mean to the poor mother ray... don't be unkind!" 
     They cheered him on.
     Another anecdote about the rays at Estero Morua was told to me by two reliable witnesses.  It occurred at the point;  the tide was moving in and the usual opportunistic predators were rounding the point to feed during the few short hours before the turn of the tide.  A handful of anglers had gathered to try their luck, and leather jackets and yellow-fin croakers were being hauled ashore at an impressive rate.  Suddenly, one fisherman experience a tremendous hit, the reel sung wildly and the rod bent sharply.  He had hooked a whopper.  Begin an expert, he soon assumed control of the situation and began to haul in his prize.  He had caught a large round stingray and when his companions saw clearly what he was reeling in, they warned him,  "Hey, be careful!  You've hooked a stingray!"  Or something like that.
    "Naw," said the angler.  "A stingray has a spine at the tip of its tail.  This one doesn't."
    He bent over, grabbed the ray just below the end of its tail and, arm outstretched, raised the trophy for all to see.  The fish sharply flexed its muscular tail and jammed its more basally-inserted spine into the captor's arm.  Blood spurted.  The fisherman dropped the ray... tottered and fell, unconscious, to the sand.  He had joined that select fellowship....the club that doesn't have a long impatient waiting list.