venirs. A large one is no bigger than a lady's hand. Horns are 

 all over its body, but are short, stubby, and harmless to human 

 flesh. Some species can "spit" blood from tiny eye sacs as far 

 as four or five feet apparently a provision for frightening such 

 enemies as dogs and cats. No other animal is known to do this. 

 Other species have a vestigial eye in the middle of the forehead. 

 The little creatures inhabit the sand and rocks, eat mostly ants 

 and small insects, and live with very little drinking water. A 

 mother horned toad with ten or fifteen postage-stamp-size babies 

 around her is one of the most intriguing families in the region. 



A beast armored in orange and black is much more fearsome. 

 It is one of two known poisonous lizards; a stubby, sluggish one 

 about 1 8 inches long, called the Gila monster because it is most 

 plentiful in the Gila River country of Arizona. It seldom attacks 

 man, but if provoked will bite. It has no hypodermic teeth, but 

 has grooved lower fangs. Thus when it strikes it must turn 

 upside down to allow poison to flow into the wound. Death can 

 result, although authorities disagree as to the potency of the 

 Gila monster. 



Real villain of the Southwest if we can believe the tellers 

 of lurid tales is the rattlesnake. He supposedly lurks every- 

 where, but many people live in the Southwest for a lifetime and 

 never encounter one rattler. Moreover, every state has rattle- 

 snakes, and one on the Atlantic seaboard has quite a few. 



The bite of any rattler is extremely dangerous, even of young 

 ones only a few inches long, but 85 per cent of the people who 

 do get bitten by rattlers live to boast about how brave they were. 



Strangest of the border rattlers is the side-winder. Making 

 him, Nature obviously was in whimsical mood; she designed 

 him to move not forward as most creatures and all automobiles 

 do, but sideways. 



No traveler to the arid Southwest if he be outdoor-minded 

 at all can be fully happy until he has "taken" at least one set 

 of rattlesnake rattles as a trophy to show the folks back home. 

 Hence, there is an active business in selling them through sou- 

 venir stores just as fish markets tactfully help out fishermen 

 whose terrific catches get away. 



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