The Wild, Wild Southwest!

by Corwin, Jeff

  When both families were crammed inside, his dad made an announcement. “I really hate to do this,” he said. “But I think we’re going to need to cut our trip to the Gila a little short. There are thunderstorms in the forecast for tonight and all day tomorrow. So . . . I propose we move to Plan B.”

  “Plan B?” asked Benjamin. “But we haven’t become junior rangers yet.” His mom gave him a look, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to leave!

  “Instead of camping here tonight, we’ll drive across the state to the White Sands National Monument,” his mom said. “We’ll spend the night in a motel, then have some extra time at the world’s largest field of gypsum sand dunes!”

  In the backseat of the van, Benjamin buckled his seat belt and huddled into his damp sleeping bag. He didn’t want to leave, but he couldn’t help being excited about where they were going next. He’d read his guidebook carefully, so he knew a little bit about what to expect. New Mexico was one state with many different kinds of environments within it, and he couldn’t wait to see the next one. By this time tomorrow, they’d be on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert!

  The next morning, Benjamin woke up in a dry motel, hardly remembering the drive from the Gila National Forest. He looked through the sliding-glass door of his family’s motel room and wished everyone would wake up so they could go outside and look around!

  His mom was the first adult up, and he could swear she read his mind. Mrs. Baxter looked at the beds where Lucy and his dad were still conked out, and whispered, “Want to take a walk?” That’s what they did back home in Florida when they got up early. It was a good way to look for local wildlife.

  “I know we’re near the Chihuahuan Desert, but where exactly are we?” Benjamin asked after they’d gotten dressed and left the motel.

  “We’re in the south-central part of the state, between White Sands and a town called Alamogordo,” his mom replied. “If you look carefully, you can see the dunes that White Sands is named for out there.” Sure enough, between the flat area of the town and the mountains in the distance was a strip of shimmering white that looked almost like snow. “I can’t wait to see them in person!”

  They continued walking, and before long, they were in a wide-open space. The ground was dry and brown, and where the Gila had been forested, there were now just small shrubs scattered all over the place. It was so different from the Gila National Forest that it was hard to believe they were in the same state.

  “Is this the desert?” Benjamin asked as they walked into it. “Where’s the tan, grainy sand? How about the giant cactuses?”

  His mom smiled. “Not all deserts have sand and cactuses. Deserts come in many shapes and sizes, and this is one of them. It actually gets quite cold here in the winter—it’s not as hot as deserts in other parts of the world. But, like all deserts, it receives hardly any rainfall. Any plant or animal that lives here must be able to withstand the very dry conditions.”

  Benjamin was still thinking about what wasn’t there. “Like cactuses, right? They’re perfect for the desert because they can hold water in their stems?”

  “That’s right,” said his mom. “But they’re not the only kind of plant that can do that. There are others, like the agave plant and the yucca. And animals have adaptations that allow them to live in the desert, too. Think of . . . ”

  His mom looked up and gasped. It was as if she had ordered a herd of animals to come running across the desert at just that moment. There, in front of the mountains, was what looked like a group of deer! “. . . pronghorn antelope!” she said.

  “Antelope?” asked Benjamin, surprised. “I thought those were deer. Or goats, maybe.” They were brown with white bellies, large eyes, and what appeared to be long horns curving forward over their heads.

  “It’s confusing,” Beth Baxter said. “They’re not really antelope, since antelope keep their horns forever, and pronghorns shed theirs. But what’s really unusual about them is the way they’re suited to this environment.”

  The pronghorns had stopped running. Now they were milling around, nibbling on the desert plants. They didn’t look that dramatic to Benjamin.

  “Next to cheetahs, they’re the fastest animals on earth!” his mom said. “They can run up to sixty miles an hour—as fast as a car on a highway. And their vision is so good that it’s often compared to how you’d see through a pair of high-power binoculars.”

  “That is so cool!” Benjamin said. “Still . . . what does that have to do with living in the desert?”

  “With their speed, they can easily cover the vast amounts of territory in the desert,” his mom explained. “They can go a long way for a meal. And with their vision, they can see predators coming a mile away. Speed and sight would come in handy anywhere, but especially here where the conditions are harsh.”

  Benjamin was still taking that in when his mom changed the subject. “You’ll see many more desert animals this afternoon,” she said. “I think that’s enough science before breakfast, though. Let’s get back and see if everyone else is awake.”

  Benjamin couldn’t wait to tell Gabe and Lucy about the pronghorns, but they were talking so fast he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “We saw a roadrunner!” Gabe said. “Just a few minutes ago!”

  For a moment, Benjamin thought they were talking about cartoons on TV. “Really?” Benjamin looked around the motel room. “Where?”

  “Right here!” Lucy added. She was standing at the sliding door in Gabe’s room, scanning the motel parking lot.

  “Come with us to find it!” Gabe cried, practically pushing Benjamin out the door.

  Their parents agreed they could go into the parking lot alone—since their rooms looked out onto it, they could keep an eye on the kids. Gabe led the way between some parked cars and onto a grassy median in front of the motel. From there, the three cousins could safely look across the rest of the lot and into the street that passed in front of it.

  “There he is!” Gabe said, pointing enthusiastically.

  The roadrunner was actually running in the road, chasing down something they couldn’t see. It had a black-and-white body and a crest of feathers on top of its head, bobbing as it ran. Its bill was large, its legs were long, and its tail was parallel to the ground as it dashed away. It reminded Benjamin of a very fast, very focused rooster!

  “It’s the state bird of New Mexico,” he told Gabe and Lucy.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “You’ve been reading the guidebook again.”

  “They can fly, too,” Gabe said, surprising Benjamin by knowing even more. “But they prefer to run or walk. They get around much faster on their feet. So fast, actually, that they can snatch certain prey out of the air.”

  Lucy looked at him curiously. “Have you been reading the book, too?” This was the first time their cousin had been able to inform them about an animal. “What do they eat?” she asked.

  Gabe smiled. “Insects. Mice. And my favorite animals: scorpions and rattle-snakes.”

  “You keep finding animals on this trip. You’ll be an expert before you know it,” Lucy told him.

  Gabe nodded, a big grin on his face. “I hope so!”

  Chapter Five

  At the White Sands Visitor Center, they picked up a new junior ranger booklet. Benjamin worked his way through a couple of puzzles right away, and he couldn’t wait to start on the page called Animal Scavenger Hunt. What he was most excited about, though, was the last activity on the list: taking a sled ride down the dunes! The kids had picked up saucer sleds at the visitor center, too, and Benjamin couldn’t wait to hit the slopes.

  Right now, though, the sleds were piled under his feet in the van’s backseat, and Benjamin couldn’t keep his eyes off the scenery as Aunt Lily drove from the visitor center down a road that took them straight through a field of dunes as white as snow! The bright whiteness stretched for miles, ending only at the base of some faraway mountains. The only familiar thing in front of him was the road, and it was so hot that he felt like he
was sitting in an oven. He’d never been anywhere quite like this, so open or so empty. “What’s the story?” Gabe asked. “Why does it look like this? It’s like being on another planet or something.”

  Mr. Baxter tried to make it simple. “Those mountains in the distance contain an unusual mineral called gypsum. It dissolves in water, like sugar or salt, so rain washes it right off the rock and into this valley.”

  “There are no rivers here to take the rainwater—and gypsum—away,” Benjamin’s mom chimed in. “Instead, the water collects at the valley’s lowest point. When it evaporates, all that’s left are gypsum crystals. And the wind does a number on those, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become the gypsum sand that you see.”

  “So this sand isn’t like what you’d find at the beach?” asked Lucy.

  “Well, it’s kind of like regular sand,” said Mr. Baxter. “All sand is made up of tiny pieces of different rocks and minerals. But here it’s made only of pure gypsum, which is white.”

  “But we’re still in the desert?” Gabe asked.

  “Absolutely!” said Mrs. Baxter. “These dunes wouldn’t exist without the dry climate of the desert. But the dunes present extra challenges to the plants and animals that live here. They need to cope with the desert climate as well as these huge stretches of white sand.”

  It was hard to imagine that anything lived here at all, Benjamin thought.

  Benjamin, Lucy, and Gabe walked on a trail through the dunes, several yards ahead of their parents. In the dazzling sun, Lucy was squinting at the directions for the Animal Scavenger Hunt in their junior ranger booklet. “There are ten animals listed here, and we need to find at least three. If we do, we can get our junior ranger badges. But I don’t know how we are going to find any of them,” she said, looking around. “A lot of desert animals are nocturnal and try to avoid the heat of the day.”

  “We can still check them off the list if we see them sleeping,” Benjamin said.

  Then Gabe had a good idea. “There’s some information about the animals in the booklet,” he said. “Maybe if we use these facts like clues, we can find the animals. Like”—he leafed through the book—“the kangaroo rat . . . ”

  Benjamin looked at his booklet and followed what Gabe was saying. “They burrow at the base of shrubs or bushes,” he said. “Maybe if we find a burrow, we can find a rat?”

  Lucy crouched down beside one of the few shrubs near the trail. Benjamin thought it might be another yucca. “Oh—there really is something here!” she cried.

  Benjamin knelt down to take a look. He could see a small hole in the ground. “Do you think that’s a burrow?”

  “Well,” Gabe said, “the kangaroo rat seals moisture into its burrow by plugging its entrance with soil.” He was still reading from the booklet.

  “So we can’t see it unless we dig through the entrance?” Lucy asked, disappointed.

  “I don’t think we should do that,” Benjamin said quickly. He hoped Gabe wouldn’t mind, but there was no way they could destroy the animal’s habitat.

  “No problem,” said Gabe. “But listen to this: Kangaroo rats can actually live without water! They save what they have; they seal themselves into the burrow, and they don’t sweat or pant like other animals do to stay cool. But they also make water when they digest their food, which is mostly seeds! How cool is that?”

  “That’s some serious adaptation,” Benjamin agreed.

  “I wish it’d come out,” Lucy said.

  “Well, maybe we’ll find another animal,” Gabe said

  Walking across the dunes was a strange sensation, Benjamin decided as they moved down the trail, the grown-ups still behind. Beneath the surface, the gypsum was almost solid. The top layer of the sand, though, was loose and grainy. After a while Benjamin also noticed that it was full of footprints! “Hey, you guys! Maybe we can track another animal this way,” he said, pointing to the footprints.

  “The only problem is that we don’t know which animal made which tracks,” Gabe said.

  “I don’t think it matters,” Lucy said. “We can just follow one and see what we find!”

  “Okay, but let’s be careful,” Gabe said.

  Benjamin glanced back to make sure the grown-ups were still in sight. The park’s rules allowed people to venture off the trail, but cautioned that it was easy to get lost in the dunes. Benjamin figured they’d be fine if they didn’t stray too far from their parents.

  Crouching down, Gabe and Lucy followed a faint set of footprints, winding around clumps of wiry grass near the trail. The shape of the prints had been blurred by the wind shifting the sand, but it was clear that they belonged to some small animal, maybe a bird. Benjamin thought that they’d lead up to another burrow. He never expected they’d stumble across the animal itself!

  But there it was, right out in the open. A totally ordinary lizard with one strange twist: It was white!

  He waited for the grown-ups to catch up, then motioned them over. “What’s this?” he asked. “An albino lizard?” Some people and animals were born without pigment in their skin, he knew. He’d never heard of that in a reptile, though.

  “Or a ghost?” Gabe joked.

  “A bleached earless lizard!” his dad said. “Amazing!”

  “Another one from our list!” exclaimed Lucy, checking it off in her booklet. Then she grabbed her camera and began taking pictures of the unusual creature.

  “This is the only place in the world that they live,” his mom added. “There are other kinds of earless lizards—scientists think they evolved that way because of their habit of going headfirst into the ground—but only the white ones live in White Sands. Can anyone guess why?” she asked.

  Gabe’s hand shot into the air. “It has to be another adaptation! If they are white, they blend in with the sand and predators can’t find them!”

  “Their camouflage is so good that they can go out in the open like this, even in the middle of the day,” Lucy added.

  “Their color may even help them stay cooler, since white reflects the sun’s light,” said Mrs. Baxter. “Many other animals in White Sands have also developed lighter coloring, everything from mice to spiders.”

  At that moment, Benjamin happened to look down at his legs, which were turning pink in splotches. “It would be nice if we could evolve to survive here, too,” he said. “Without worrying about sunscreen!”

  After Benjamin’s dad helped him reapply sun block, he said, “You kids ready to bring out the sleds?” They could return to the scavenger hunt later.

  As they walked back to the car to get their rented sleds, Lucy did a happy dance, but Benjamin admitted something to Gabe as they were climbing to the top of a dune. “You know, I’ve never been sledding before! Unless you count being on a dogsled in Alaska. Do you know what to do?”

  “Don’t worry—just follow me,” Gabe said, smiling. “I’ve been sledding tons of times in Central Park. The only trick is not to go headfirst.”

  At the top of a tall dune, the kids got a panoramic view of the park. The sand was so white and he could see so far that Benjamin could almost imagine he was standing at the North Pole (if he ignored the heat). He put his saucer sled near the edge of the dune, settled down, and pushed off with his hands. Whoosh!

  On his next trip down, though, Benjamin’s sled turned over near the bottom. He wasn’t hurt, just startled. He sat on the harder sand at the base of the dune, watching Gabe and Lucy walk back up. Then something caught his eye.

  He watched it until the other kids came back down. “Look! Over here!” he called to them. “I think I found a stinkbug!” He’d left his booklet in the car, but he remembered they were large and known for roaming randomly around their habitat. This one seemed to be walking around in circles!

  Gabe pulled his junior ranger booklet out of his back pocket. “The darkling beetle,” he read, “is about an inch long, smooth and black, with segmented antennae.”

  “Yep,” said Benjamin
. “That sounds right.”

  “No ability to fly,” Gabe added.

  “Looks like its wings are stuck together,” Lucy reported.

  “Also known as a stinkbug for its unusual way of defending itself. It raises its rear end and sprays a bad-smelling chemical!” Gabe finished up.

  “The skunk of the desert,” Benjamin said, laughing. “Better keep our distance!”

  “Oh, definitely,” Lucy said. “Because now we’ve found three animals. And you know what that means, right? We missed our chance when we were at the Gila National Forest. But we can become junior rangers here, instead. We can finally get our badges!”

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, inside the visitor center, a ranger handed each of the cousins an embroidered badge. It showed an image of the dunes, with a yucca tree sticking out of the sand. Benjamin was already thinking about where he’d ask his mom to sew it for him. On his backpack, maybe? On the sleeve of his favorite jacket? He was so absorbed in the possibilities that he almost missed it when the ranger said, “Right this way, please.”

  Benjamin followed Gabe and Lucy into a large room with rows of seats and a big flag. “This is where we bring our tour groups for orientation,” the ranger explained. “And also where we swear in our junior rangers. I’ll recite the pledge line by line, and you can repeat after me.”

  Feeling like he was being sworn in for an important job, Benjamin repeated, “I promise to appreciate, respect, and protect all national parks. I also promise to continue learning about the landscape, plants, animals, and history of these special places. I will share what I learn with my friends and family.”

  The pledge reminded him of the rules his family always tried to follow when they were camping or exploring nature: Be respectful. Leave nothing behind. These were like second nature to him. They were still new to Gabe, though, and after the ranger handed him his certificate, Gabe kept saying, “Wait till my friends back home hear about this!”