The trouble began, when

October 13, 2026.

In 2010, my late wife and I purchased a home by the Deem Hills, in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a nice late winter day, probably in March. I decided to go for a walk, and instead went clambering straight up a steep talus slope full of jagged blocks of dark basalt, all the while imagining salamanders beneath all that insulative stone, presently at a pleasant soil temperature and humidity on that day. Instead, I encountered a white snail shell adhered to a boulder, wedged in and shaded by a small flowering herb. That was the last thing I thought to find that day, upon the slope of a fully exposed basalt mesa covered in saguaro,  cholla and palo verde trees facing due southwest.

The next day, maybe even that very day, I called an old supervisor from Arizona Game and Fish Department.  From 1992-1994 I worked for Mike Sredl and Jeff Howland at the nongame branch herpetology department. I gave Mike a call and found myself chatting with Jeff Sorensen soon after.  I had no idea what I had found and was quite perplexed, to whit he told me I may have a Phoenix talussnail, Sonorella allynsmithi, and that it was only known from Piestewa Peak. Here I was almost 15 miles (24 km) northwest of the type locality.

I soon went all in on sorting things out with this snail. The city was encroaching and there were discoveries waiting to be found. This is a product of that one moment.

2011, Waters, N.D. 2011. Distribution and Ecology of the Phoenix talussnail, Sonorella allynsmithi. Technical Report 264, Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program, Arizona Game & Fish Department, 2011 

https://www.academia.edu/1390388/Distribution_and_Ecology_of_the_Phoenix_Talussnail_Sonorella_allynsmithi