Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM
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Hanging in there, Prickly Pear Cactus, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, January 23, 2009
Life's tough - while it lasts
Life can be a struggle out here in the desert. Those pesky creosotes, in taking over so much of the desert, haven't made life easy for the natives. Some don't survive. Others put up a valiant struggle against long odds and manage to barely hang in there. Like this Prickly Pear cactus.
Night camp
Site 9 - Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to Leasburg Dam State Park website
- Locate Leasburg Dam State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69