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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
Trans-Pecos blind snake
Western coachwhip snake
Trans-Pecos rat snake
Western diamondback rattlesnake
Blackneck garter snake

37
Baird’s rat snake
Big Bend patchnose snake
Texas lyre snake
Glossy snake
Mohave rattlesnake
Longnose snake
Black-hooded snake
Bullsnake

38

Two Non-Drinkers
The kangaroo rat and roadrunner exemplify adaptations for
desert living. Neither drinks water, as a rule. The
roadrunner gets its moisture largely from its omnivorous
diet, which includes lizards and small rattlesnakes. It kills
them with stunning blows of its beak. Its characteristic X-
track provides good traction in sand. Agile and nimble, this
60-centimeter- (2-foot) long bird can fly, but it prefers to
run, at up to 32 kph (20 mph). Mexicans call the
roadrunner paisano, “fellow countryman.”

The kangaroo rat metabolizes both energy and moisture

from seeds that contain less than 4 percent water. It has
no sweat glands and cools itself by breathing. Its nasal
passages, cooler than the rest of its body, condense breath
moisture for retention. Its kidneys, among the most
efficient in the animal world, excrete uric wastes as a
concentrated paste, not as liquid, saving further precious
water. Its deep burrow has a year-round relative humidity
between 30 and 50 percent. These rodents sometimes fight
 with each other, leaping high into the air and striking at
each other with their strong hind legs.

You can see the nighthawk now against the pale and pearly 40
afterlight, and a star pops out, then another and another.
Suddenly, more stars seem to be twinkling than can possibly exist in
the universe. In the absence of man-made light they are an
overwhelming presence. The Milky Way stretches from horizon to
horizon. Who can believe that our Sun is just a middle-sized star, and
planet Earth a mere speck spinning on the fringes of that gorgeous
luminosity?

On a night of no moon, in the mist of starlight, the mule deer may

stay active until dawn. On mild, windless nights the hunters and the
hunted come out in full force: insect-eating scorpions, tarantulas, and
wolf spiders; seed-eating pocket mice and kangaroo rats; rodent-
eating snakes, badgers, and owls. What a hurrying and scurrying,
what popping up from holes and burrows, what slithering and
digging, what squeaks and shrieks, what patient waiting in ambush.
And by what ingenious means do the hunters find the hunted in the
dark! Beep-beeping bats locate insects and avoid obstacles by
bouncing sound waves, imperceptible to humans, off objects as they
fly. The female katydid wears her ears on her knees; by waving her
front legs she zeroes in on the male’s mating call. Cold-blooded
rattlers heat-sense warm-blooded rats and mice. And just as an
astronomer opens the aperture on his telescope, so the owl at night
widens his enormous eyes for light from far off stars.

Toward dawn the morning star burns like a lamp in the east, and
gradually, a pale flush spreads upward from the crest of the Sierra del
Carmen. A bank of clouds hangs off the Fronteriza, and as the
overhead stars wink out and the morning star burns on, the pale
glow turns peach and seeps higher. Just enough air stirs to shake the
mesquite. A waking bird emits one cluck. Soon the clouds below the
Fronteriza go salmon pink and flare with internal fire. As the sun tops
the Sierra del Carmen and spills a glare sharp as ice shards over the
desert, you hear a distant bark. One yap, two, a soprano howl, an
alto tremulo, then chord upon chord in wild and worshipful sounding
chorus. Somewhere in the ruddy hills a pack of coyotes seems to sing
the sun up.

41
Desert flowering plants adorn a mudflat almost as
metaphors of patience. The secret lies with seeds that have
adapted to remain dormant for years, if necessary, until
enough rain falls to bypass their germination inhibitors.

42
 When rains raise the water level, animals drink from
natural tanks such as Ernst Tinaja. Tinajas can also be
death traps when the water level falls so low that animals
can’t climb back out. Mountain lion claws have etched
desperation into the rims of some.

43

Waterholes, Springs, and the Fifth Season

One of the most astonishing sounds in the desert is that of trickling
water. One of the happiest desert sights is a pool dancing with
aquatic creatures. Who can believe it: Tadpoles darting about, water
striders dimpling the surface, blue darners stitching zig-zags through
the air and dipping the tips of their abdomens into the water? What a
celebration of life in the midst of apparent lifelessness.

Water is the single most important need of almost all life forms in the
desert. The larger mammals, many birds, and some insects must
drink daily to survive. Some amphibians and arthropods must spend
at least part of their lives in the water. Each waterhole is a little oasis
supporting its community of plants and animals, and drawing from
the outside world a thirsty parade of creatures that comes to it to
sustain life.

Apart from the river, there are at least 180 springs, seeps, and wells
in the park that serve as wildlife watering places. Most of these are
springs located within the grasslands on the lower slopes of the
Chisos Mountains. Springs differ greatly, ranging from a seep with 0.5
centimeters (0.25 inches) of water standing in the grass, to a 25-
centimeter (10-inch) deep pool the size of a table top, to a string of
pools connected by a flowing stream. Since springs depend for their
flow on water seeping through the ground, and since this in turn
depends on rainfall, the amount of water found at a spring may vary
greatly from season to season and from year to year. Other crucial
factors are evaporation and the water consumption and retention
properties of the spring’s plant life.

You can see most springs a long way off. They stand out like
timbered islands in an ocean, with tall cottonwoods, willows, and
honey mesquite, and man-high thickets of thorny acacia festooned in
silver showers of virgin’s bower. Dozens of little rodent holes
perforate the ground among the roots and the tall grasses 44
quiver with furtive comings and goings. Life at such a spring
follows a regular pattern from dawn to dusk, although it may actually
be busiest at night when most desert creatures are abroad.

At first daylight four or five redheaded turkey vultures stir in the

cottonwoods where they have spent the night. They shrug their black
shoulders and wait for the sun and the thermals to rise. An early
blacktailed gnatcatcher chases a late moth, but the moth proves the
better acrobat and makes it to safety in the thicket. Doves leave the
ground with a flutter of white-barred wings and level off across the
desert. By following the game trails to water, you can read the sign of
nighttime visitors: The cloven-hoofed track of peccaries imprinted in
the ooze, cigar-shaped coyote scat complete with fur, the flat-footed
print of a striped skunk, and the larger cloven hoofprints of mule
deer.
Desert amphibians? Leopard frogs live along the river and
near ponds and springs.
Couch’s spadefoot toad evades drought by burrowing with
specially adapted hind feet (bottom). When rains come, the
toads move to the nearest puddle and mate. Their eggs
hatch six times faster than those of garden toads and the
tadpoles quadruple their birth weight by the second
evening of life. With luck some mature before the puddle
evaporates—and dig in to await another wet spell.
Soon it is full morning with flies biting, lizards scuttling, and
butterflies feeding in jackass clover. By noonday a brisk breeze is
shaking the cottonwood leaves, producing a sound like rushing water,
and two ravens have come to croak in a little mesquite. Now they fly,
with the sun striking silver from jet feathers. They circle the oasis,
flapping and soaring, driving their shadows below them over the
ground.

Here on a willow trunk is a life-and-death contest. Rubbed raw by the

branch of a neighboring tree, the willow is exuding sap from a
saucer-sized wound. Drawn to the sap, six butterflies stand on the
damp spot peacefully feeding, slowly opening and closing their wings.
All at once a mantidfly pounces from ambush and grabs at a butterfly
with his clawed front legs. The butterfly leaps like a scared horse,
and in reaction the whole group takes to the air. But in a moment
they settle back down, roll out their tongues like party toys, and
begin to sip. Another fierce lunge by the mantidfly, another scattering
of butterflies. And all the time you can hear the tick-tick-tick of a
beetle boring a burrow in the diseased wood.

As evening comes on, the doves come in from the desert, flying low
along the line of seepage. The vultures return to roost, lazily circling
the cottonwood’s crown. While it is still light the butterflies seek cover
in the cottonwood leaves. As it gets dark the moths come out, and
after them the bats, beep-beeping as they cut erratic patterns
through the dusky air. Soon the breeze will die down, and the 45
starlit night will throb with the long drawn trill of tree crickets.
In the wee small hours there will be no sound, no breath of air or
outward sign of life. Then suddenly along a sandy trail moves a
blackness shaped like a high-backed child’s chair. It is a striped
skunk, tail-high, come to take its turn at the waterhole.
 The javelina, or peccary, smells like a skunk. This nighttime
wanderer uses the scent for territorial marking, not
defense. Curious and shortsighted, javelinas might
approach a hiker—not to attack, but to investigate.

Few and far between are the springs with sufficient flow to send a
brook singing down a ravine. But such a place is Glenn Spring, the
chief spring along a dry draw that starts in the Chisos and cuts
deeply through many-colored clays as it crosses the desert. Historic
photos show Glenn Spring enclosed within a man-made rock wall.
Today you cannot even find the source, so thick is the tangle of tules
and cane grown up around it. The flow from Glenn Spring trickles
down the draw about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile), collecting in pools and
gurgling over rocks before it goes underground. Some of the pools
are crystal clear, and some are black with the acids of plant decay.
Deeper pools are fern-green with algae. Little black snails harvest
algae on the rocks and leopard frogs croak and plop, so quick to hide
among the reeds that you can hardly find them. These slim, spotted
amphibians, insect feeders, mate in water. Their larval young, free-
swimming tadpoles, must live in water, feeding on microscopic
organisms until they grow lungs and legs for life ashore.

The tadpole itself falls prey to giant water bugs, air-breathing water
dwellers that are also strong fliers. The water boatman is a
vegetarian who sculls about from one underwater plant to another.
You can hardly tell him from the backswimmer except that the latter
swings his oars upside down and spends much time on the surface
hanging head down, the better to spy the aquatic insects upon which
he feeds. The water strider is another hunter, but this spider-legged
semi-aquatic skates atop the water, seeking terrestrial insects that
have dropped onto the surface. Just as the birds and bats eat
different foods at different feeding levels, so do the creatures that
inhabit a pool, be it only centimeters deep.

And the creatures above the pool: The damselfly alights on a reed
and rests with its transparent, netlike wings closed above its slim
body. The stouter-bodied dragonfly rests with its wings outstretched
and likes to fly in tandem. Both of these aerial beauties must lay their
eggs in water, and their larvae are fully aquatic predators that
breathe with gills like fish.

46

This flash flood (above) washed out a portion of the

Maverick Road. Flash floods can be killers to the unwary.
They can sweep down on you from storms you never saw
or heard.

47
 Cottonwood Creek’s wide bed suggests that it, too, knows
rage. Low water levels favor algae growths whose colors
mirror the cottonwoods’ refreshing verdure overhead.

Many of the same water insects inhabit yet another type of 48

waterhole, the tinaja, a natural pothole that traps rain or runoff
in solid rock. Dependent on rainfall, tinajas often dry up, yet they
may be the only water source over a large area. If a tinaja is deep
enough it may survive evaporation, but the water may shrink back so
far below the lip of the bowl that animals cannot reach it. A cougar
once drowned in a tinaja here because it could not climb out again.
Tinajas may also turn into death traps for the plants and insects that
inhabit them. In a well-balanced pool the algae create the oxygen
and food that aquatic creatures need, but as the pool dries up there
is less and less oxygen and the products of decay become
concentrated. At last these become so poisonous that the
reproductive engine cuts off and the pool is literally dead. But even a
dead pool may be a source of life to outside animals.

Ernst Tinaja is a good site for watching desert wildlife. It lies in a

rocky, canyon-like drainage near the Old Ore Road. Though the upper
tank measures 6 by 9 meters (20 by 30 feet) animals may not be
able to use it because when the water is 3 meters (10 feet) deep it
lies more than one-half meter (2 feet) below the edge. But mule deer
and javelina frequent the smaller pools, which likely hold algae and a
roster of aquatic life.

Other important tinajas may be found on Mesa de Anguila. The mesa

top has a maze of trails leading to and from tinajas that have served
as a focus of life across countless centuries. You can find Indian
shelters in the form of overhanging cliffs up and down a canyon, with
a permanent tinaja right in the middle.

Like the so-called lower animals mankind has long been dependent
on waterholes. Since the first prehistoric Indians came to Big Bend,
people have lived beside springs and tinajas. And what a pleasant
prospect you still find from the sooted rock shelters above Croton
Springs as you look out across the grasslands and the tules at the
spring, toward the crenelated wall of the Chisos. Rounded red
boulders beside the spring contain age-old mortar holes, ground so
deep you can stick your arm in up to your elbow.

Before the day of automobiles, all the peoples who traveled 49

through Big Bend routed their trails from water to water. On
the way to Oak Spring you can sit in the shade of a Comanche
marker tree, a great oak bent in a bow with all its branches growing
upright. Comanches marked a good campsite by tying a sapling
down; with maturity it naturally assumed a horizontal or bowed
position.
Who said the desert’s palette must be dull? Desert locusts
show vivid greens and yellows.

As Big Bend opened to ranching, the need for more watering places
grew. Ranchers drilled wells, put up windmills, and scraped out stock
tanks. Some of these waterholes remain to this day. The wells at
Dugout Wells and the Sam Nail Ranch are still maintained. Without
regular care such improvements would soon disappear in the desert.
One of man’s inadvertent “improvements,” the tamarisk or salt cedar,
has proved an unwelcome water guzzler. The tree is about the size of
an ordinary apple tree, but it loses to the atmosphere about five
times as much moisture as an apple tree does. In desert country
where water is so scarce, tamarisks pose a serious problem. Brought
to this country from the Mediterranean area for use as a windbreak,
salt cedar escaped cultivation and spread like wildfire across the
Southwest, invading river bottoms, drainage ways, and waterholes in
unbelievable numbers.

The tamarisk spreads by runners and apparently reaches isolated

springs when mammals and birds bring seeds in on their fur and
feathers. Growing at the rate of nearly 2 meters (8 feet) in a summer,
the deep-rooted tamarisk uses up a disproportionate amount of water
and actually lowers the water table. It is useless to man, and wildlife
does not browse it because it tastes so salty.

Big Bend National Park conducts a tamarisk eradication program as a

water conservation measure centered about the springs. It is hot,
dirty, time-consuming work because tamarisks are almost impossible
to kill. No known creature can be used for control, and if you leave so
much as a root hair, another tree will grow. You have to saw the tree
off and paint the stump with a special approved chemical that does
not harm other plants or wildlife and will not contaminate the spring.
This effort to save the precious amounts of moisture stored in the Big
Bend landscape requires constant vigilance and back-breaking effort.

50

Big Bend Ranching Days

Cattle ranching in the Big Bend began about 1870 when Milton
Faver set himself up as ‘Don’ Milton not far from today’s Marfa. He
eventually built five spreads, including the region’s first sheep
ranch. As his headquarters he built a fort at Cibolo (Buffalo) Creek
Ranch. The Army gave him a cannon for it and even garrisoned
soldiers there under his command. During one difficult period,
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