Flora and fauna by Eve

On the Southwest Chief, I was reading Willa Cather's "Death Comes For the Archbishop" set in this country, and had just read the following passage when what to my wondering eyes appeared from beside the tracks but the incarnation of those very words. Speaking of the only plant in the desert that appeared to have any vitality, Cather writes,
"the whole rigid, upthrust matted clump looks less like a plant than like a great colony of grey-green lizards, moving and suddenly arrested by fear." Thus my introduction to the wild pumpkin.

Right outside our camper in Las Cruces where Maryrose and I met up with the guys, there was a pencil cholla - a bushlike cactus - which Howard told me contained a bird's nest with babies. We could stand less than a foot away and watch the mother bring little green berries to her chicks who were fledging and taking exploratory jumps along the prickly branches close to the nest. It turned out to be a curved beak thrasher.

Here in Tucson, we stopped at Saguaro National Park, only 108 degrees. Families of javelinas with a passel of babies were taking refuge in the shade of the visitor center's walls. It is a desolate and wild beauty, but ascend to the tops of the mountains here and you reach "sky islands," an entirely different ecosystem of lush forests of ponderosa pines and plentiful water.

Bugs -the visitor center at SNP had a fascinating display. I mention here just a few.
The bark scorpion - very small, but deadly - affects nervous system
Vinegaroon - looks like a scorpion, but lacks the stinger tail - emits a vinegar smell when injured
Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion - looks horrible, delivers a painful sting, but won't kill you
Conenose bug - small bloodsuckers
and the most curious name of all...
the Solpugid - also called sun spider - drains the bodies of its victims and leaves an empty shell

Speaking of different ecosystems, we are 20 minutes away from the experimental living site, Biosphere.

Heading to San Diego today via Yuma.