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Rock rattlers are small, rarely exceeding 2 ½ feet. Their coloration reflects their environment. Rock rattlers in limestone landscapes are typically light grey, while those found in the Davis Mountain are often pink.

In “Living with Javelinas: Multispecies Conviviality in Texas,” forthcoming from UT Press, anthropologist Adam Johnson explores how people can coexist thoughtfully with wildlife, with the iconic borderlands creatures as the case study.

Órale, the onda this week in Caló is Comanche, AKA, Ft Stockton, also known as Stakitas. The name likely came from the old springs there that bear the same name, Comanche Springs, an oasis in an otherwise dry plain. That name in some fashion came from the Comanche people, who used to hunt bison that watered from those springs.

The American West is slowly being torn apart by tectonic forces. One element of this “extension” is the Rio Grande Rift, a growing rip in the continent, traced by the river itself, from Colorado to Big Bend.

Órale, the onda this week in Caló is Mirlangas, AKA, Midland. While the resemblance between the two words might seem tenuous for a non-Caló speaker, it’s quite on the mark for everybody else. It’s based on how the older, non-English speaking raza used say Midland: Mirlang. The next generation found levity in it and incorporated the mispronunciation into Caló and added the a and s at the end to align with Caló’s aesthetic need to end all words, most especially placenames, with a soft sound.

Alpha-gal Syndrome is a potentially dangerous allergy to red meat, and it’s transmitted by the lone star tick. The tick gets its name not from our state, but from the single white spot found on the backs of females.

Órale, the feature this week in Caló is the expression, se la robó. In modern Spanish, it means he stole her. In Caló it means he eloped with her. In that tight knit world, an elopement is a theft, but there’s no victim or perpetrator. Both parties to the elopement, the robón and the robada, bear equal responsibility. All of this said, robos like this do occur; and when they do, both parties talk about it as if they’re both the stolen and the stealer.

Órale, thanks for the vacation last month, raza. I enjoyed it de amadres. I did the vuelta y came back with lots of new words and a special onda that used to be a big huato in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico: a semi-pro baseball league. We’re gonna ponerle with this onda the rest of the year. No doubt there’s still raza out there who used to play in this league. Y pos, since baseball’s not really a Caló onda, the episodes are gonna be more about the romance and drama that moved around with this league than the game itself. The featured words are gonna be the placenames in the region.This first place we’re gonna talk about is Tarilas, AKA, Pecos, which is next to Bastos (Barstow) and Cremitas (Kermit) and Monitos (Monahans).

The Trump administration’s planned 30-foot-high border wall, stretching more than 160 miles from Hudspeth County to the western boundary of Big Bend Ranch State Park, will impact a landscape as wild as any in Texas, with profound impacts for both desert wildlife and desert science.

How will the Trump administration’s new border-infrastructure projects impact these bears? Scientists at Alpine’s Borderlands Research Institute, or BRI, are seeking answers to this timely question.