California Surveyors Forums

Jim Frame would appreciate this little guy guarding a Yolo County Standard Monument.

I *do* appreciate it, since I took the photo. That's not a county land net monument, but rather a subsidence monitoring mark on the privately-owned Conaway Ranch. As I recall, it was installed in the late '80s or early '90s, and I no longer remember what the county's involvement in the project was.

You were lucky my friend. I friend of mine found a small rattlesnake in a well monument just before he stuck his hand into it to clean it out.

dharri wrote:You were lucky my friend. I friend of mine found a small rattlesnake in a well monument just before he stuck his hand into it to clean it out.

The time to find the rattlesnake is "BEFORE" you stick your hand where the rattlesnake resides.
I would say your friend "DONE GOOD".

Is that a k-rat? Remember when those little buggers stopped construction in SC in the 90's and cost society dearly. Jp

See?? Our industry provided new homes for them. Why shut us down? ;)

We opened one up on the Mission Beach Boardwalk and it had dropped at least five feet down, into a subsurface wash out. As best we could tell, there is at least a five foot by ten-foot cavity there. Hundreds of people walk, bicycle and stroll over this place. To my knowledge, the City has not fixed it. It is a disaster waiting to happen.

Proud7191 wrote:Is that a k-rat? Remember when those little buggers stopped construction in SC in the 90's and cost society dearly. Jp

When I worked for the County, we had a project where the mitigation costs were as much as the improvement cost. Part of it was an endangered type of rat. They all had to be caught, put up in temporary rat condos, exclusion fencing built, and then the critters were repatriated after construction.

A year or two after our construction, a developer next door, faced with similar mitigation costs, caught a few of them and had them genetically tested. It turned out they were regular rats and not the endangered variety.

Steve Martin wrote:

Proud7191 wrote:Is that a k-rat? Remember when those little buggers stopped construction in SC in the 90's and cost society dearly. Jp

When I worked for the County, we had a project where the mitigation costs were as much as the improvement cost. Part of it was an endangered type of rat. They all had to be caught, put up in temporary rat condos, exclusion fencing built, and then the critters were repatriated after construction.

A year or two after our construction, a developer next door, faced with similar mitigation costs, caught a few of them and had them genetically tested. It turned out they were regular rats and not the endangered variety.

In the late 80's in Riverside County the Stephen's Kangaroo rat Mitigation fee for development was right at $2,000.00 per acre. With all of the fees the cost of the land with subdivision approximately doubled.

The best shock I had was when I discovered a yellow scorpion in a well down in Shelter Cove. I was glad it was a yellow one; I don't know if I would have noticed a black one!