many strange creatures Nature has placed exclusively in the 

 Texas-to-California border country. 



Arizona's state bird, the cactus wren, is almost as renowned. 

 Travelers come there prejudiced in its favor, expecting the 

 dainty little feathered wren of the Eastern states. But this cactus 

 fellow is tough and he-man in both stature and habits. He is 

 bigger than a mocking bird, and as fearless. He builds a long, 

 bottle-shaped nest in a cactus, then builds two or three dummy 

 nests some hundreds of yards away to mislead enemies; he will 

 hang around a dummy home while Mrs. Wren does the hatch- 

 ing. Mrs. E. D. Ryder, wife of a rancher near Phoenix, hung 

 Mr. Ryder's white shorts on her clothes line, and two days later 

 found that cactus wrens had built a nest in one leg! Mr. Ryder 

 ordered all disturbances around the clothes line to cease until 

 those nestlings could fly away. 



The horned toads which are really lizards are common in 

 the Southwest. Many children keep them as pets, and many more 

 are tied with dainty ribbons and shipped east as tourist sou- 



The Gila Monster 



