The coyote is a smaller member of the wolf family, to which both the dog and the fox belong. He has much of the same cunning, and like Br'er Fox is fond of chicken. But his home is usually so far from modern conveniences he has few chances to visit poultry yards, and lives from paw to mouth, as it were, catching a jack-rabbit when he can—the desert rabbits seem to sleep with both eyes open—and lizards when he can't get rabbits. At the worst he will make out on "prickly pears," the pods of the mesquite bush, which are full of seeds.
THE WINGED PEOPLE OF THE DESERT
Although you will not realize it at first there are a good many birds in the desert. Some are transients, just passing through, and stopping for a rest and a bite or two on the way. Others, such as the linnet and the wrens, have nests tucked away among the spines of the cactus, and there's a finch singing from the top of that bush! In flower time in the Arizona desert (of which we are now speaking) there are humming-birds, but their colors are not so bright as those of our humming-birds. Feathers, like hair, have the natural color burned out of them in the desert sun. Only the insects keep their bright clothes. Turn over a stone and away will scamper golden beetles, silver beetles, turquoise blue beetles, beetles in bronze; a whole boxful of jewels on six legs.
From McCook's "Nature's Craftsmen." Copyright Harper and Brothers
THE LIFE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
The late Harry Fenn, who did everything so well, drew this picture of one of the incidents of the life struggle in the desert. It represents the desert wasp, known as the "tarantula killer," pursuing its prey. The tarantula of the Southwest is the giant among our native spiders, but it cowers before the wasp, and hurries off as fast as it can; but usually it can't, and is soon laid away in Lady Wasp's nest as food for her solitary baby when it comes out of the egg which the mother wasp lays in the spider's body.
INSECTS, LIZARDS, SPIDERS, AND OTHERS
And there are gray lizards, yellow lizards, and lizards called "skinks," with tails as blue as indigo; and the gila monster, a lizard in dull orange and black, with an ugly disposition and poison in his lower jaw. Another big lizard of the Arizona desert is called the chuckwalla. The Arizona Indians are very fond of him. They say he tastes like chicken.
Most of the spider family are represented in Arizona, including the trap-door spider, who hides and waits for his dinner in a hole with a wonderful trap-door that he made himself. This door he slams tight when he gets you inside, if you're a fly or anything like that. He also shuts this door in the face of his enemy, the centipede, a flat worm a foot long, with loads of legs and feet. His name means "hundred footed." He has poison daggers in his feet and his two-branched tail.