xciv 
THE CACTUS HOUSES WOODPECKERS 
I SN'T IT ODD that the 
sahuaro, giant cactus of the 
Southwest, is, upon occasion, 
converted into a skyscraper 
apartment that houses many 
queer, red-headed families of 
woodpeckers! 
There are few trees in the 
desert country that afford opportunity for the wood¬ 
pecker to make houses for his family. The sahuaro pre¬ 
sents a proper trunk for this house-building, barring the 
disadvantage of its rows of projecting thorns. The wood¬ 
pecker can, however, squeeze between these thorns and 
find a chance to ply his bill without great danger. Once 
he digs through the leathery skin which seals the plant 
air-tight, the going is easier even than it is in the soft 
fiber of the cottonwood tree along the streams. All that 
he encounters, in fact, is a damp, pithy substance that 
might almost be scooped out with a spoon. This is the 
chamber in which the sahuaro stores up water for the long 
stretches between rains. 
And right here a very peculiar thing happens. When 
the woodpecker digs out his cave to just the size he wants 
it, he finds it damp, like a basement below the water 
level, and quite unfit as a place in which to raise a fam¬ 
ily. This is bad from the standpoint of the sahuaro also, 
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