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To city dwellers "rat" is apt to mean the house rat. Our smaller gentle native wood rat, or pack rat is only distantly related. He approaches our idea of a "nice" animal, with larger ears and eyes, a blunter nose, hairy tail, and softer fur, lighter in color below and on the feet.

Vermilion flycatchers are found year around at stock tanks and other places with permanent water in the region, especially to the south of the Llano Estacado, but a few nest on the southern end of the plateau.

Lawns are boring and wasteful of water and fertilizer. It’s much better to have a meadow. Tradition holds that ancient and classical gardens had green plots that were sprinkled with flowers, as if the gardeners had small meadows in mind.

On Mimms Ranch outside Marfa, the Dixon Water Foundation is using some surprising tools to improve a grassland’s ability to absorb water: cattle and electric fence. How does this work?

Have you ever seen a Horned Lark? Horned Larks are seldom seen, but they live year around on the Llano Estacado and the intermontane grasslands of the Chihuahuan Desert.

To envision the long ago landscape before modern economic endeavors changed it, consider the Burrowing Owls, familiars of the prairie dog. The dog owls are insectivores, fond of grasshoppers and the beetles that eat the dung of grazing animals.

Population explosions are an intriguing phenomenon. At times, a species will suddenly become extremely common. In some years, jackrabbits will line the highways a hundred to a mile.

The breeze gently clapping a cottonwood’s leaves. The fierce gust that flings dirt into your eyes. Wind’s energy is revealed in myriad ways in the Chihuahuan Desert.

When the morning whistle blows on Mimms Ranch, the cattle get to work. This herd has a job that might surprise a lot of people: improving the health of a desert grassland and its ability to absorb water. How are they doing it?

If the deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico were in the pharmacology business, then creosote would be their perennial best seller.