154 



THE DESERT 



Mule-deer 

 browning. 



Coyotes and 

 wild cats 

 living with- 

 out water. 



watery to quench thirst than a lobe of the 

 prickly pear or a joint of cholla. But he is nat- 

 urally fond of green vegetation, and in the early 

 morning he usually leaves the valley and climbs 

 the mountains where with goats and mountain 

 sheep he browses on the twigs of shrub and tree. 

 The coyote likes water, too, but he puts up with 

 a liquid meal of quail eggs, eating some mes- 

 quite beans, or at best absorbing the blood from 

 some rabbit. The wild cat will go for weeks 

 without more moisture than the blood of birds 

 or lizards, and then perhaps, after long thirst, 

 he will come to a water pocket in the rocks to 

 lap only a handful, doing it with an angry 

 snarling snap as though he disliked it and was 

 drinking under compulsion. The gray wolf 

 is too much of a traveller to depend upon any 

 one locality. He will run fifty miles in a night 

 and be back before morning. Whether he 

 gets water or not is not possible to ascertain. 

 The badger, the coon, and the bear are very 

 seldom seen in the more arid regions. They 

 are not strictly speaking desert animals because 

 unfitted to endure desert hardships. They are 

 naturally great eaters and sleepers, loving cool 

 weather and their own fatness ; and to that the 

 desert is sharply opposed. There is nothing 



