The Fifth Season ~
The
Enlightened Bean
Rain, Sex and Hope
Café
Great Music
Fabulous Food
Reasonable Prices
by Cathryn A. Hoyt
S
Serving breakfast and lunch
6:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.
432.229.3131
201 W. O’Reilly, Presidio
Skinner & lara, p.C.
Certified public accountants
610 e Holland avenue
alpine, tX 79830
phone (432) 837-5861
Fax (432) 837-5516
WE LOVE SAVING YOU MONEY WHEN YOU
COMBINE YOUR AUTO AND HOME
Call it our passion. Our destiny. Our muse. All we know is that
helping you save makes our hearts go pitter-patter. Which is why
we’re always ready to help you find coverage to fit your budget
and your risk tolerance. For outstanding rates and service, call
today.
Dona Blevins
432-837-2225
http://www.farmersagent.com/dblevins/
106 W Sul Ross Ave
Alpine, TX 79830
22
pring, summer, fall and winter. In most
parts of the country, people settle for four
seasons. Here in the Chihuahuan Desert
region, we dream, hope and talk constantly about
our fifth season – the rainy season. Local wags will
tell you that the fifth season starts on July 4th –
with a crash of thunder, a gust of wind and a tor-
rential downpour that causes Independence Day
celebrants to scurry for cover and ranchers to sigh
in relief.
The sighs of relief are due to the fact that, in
the Chihuahuan Desert, up to 75 percent of our
annual precipitation falls in the summer months.
This gift from the heavens results in a frenzy of
friskiness as our plant and animal neighbors get
on with the business of life.
The first hard rain of the season brings out
thousands of fuzzy, bright red velvet mites. They
emerge from the soil with only one goal in mind –
find a mate. The male velvet mite does most of
the work in this timeless dance. He’s a gardener
by nature, creating a “sperm garden” on small
bits of plant material. But gardens need admirers,
so he lays an elaborate silk pathway that radiates
out from his sperm garden. If a female encoun-
ters the path and finds it appropriately enticing,
she’ll follow it to the sperm deposit and sit in the
sperm, thus impregnating herself.
The female velvet mite can lay up to 100,000
eggs. The larvae from these eggs attach them-
selves to grasshoppers, beetles, butterflies and
other arthropods. They get their nutrients by
sucking the juices out of their unlucky hosts. After
the larvae mature, they return to the soil, where
they feed on insect and snail eggs and other tiny
arthropods – until the first hard rain of next year,
when they emerge to start the cycle all over again.
The rumble of thunder can bring another
desert inhabitant to the surface for a frenzy of
breeding and feeding. The small spadefoot toad
spends most of the year buried in the ground
where it can avoid the hot and dry conditions of
the desert surface. But vibrations caused by thun-
der indicate to the toad that moist conditions
exist, and the toads begin to emerge in mass. The
males seek temporary pools and puddles of water
where they immediately send up a deafening
breeding chorus, a come-hither call for any
female within a half-mile radius.
After breeding, the female lays 3,000 to 5,000
eggs at a time, and the race for survival begins.
The eggs must hatch and the larvae must pass
through the aquatic tadpole stage before their
puddle of water dries up under the heat of the
desert sun. Eggs typically hatch in about 36 hours,
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2010
Photo by Cathryn Hoyt
Male two-tailed swallowtails gather sodium from rain
puddles that they pass on to females during mating.
and the tadpoles metamorphose into juveniles
within eight to 10 days of hatching.
While on the surface, the spadefoot toads feed
on protein-rich insects that swarm with the com-
ing of the rains. A few good meals increase the fat
supplies of the toad enough to allow them to bur-
row deep into the desert soil and patiently await
the thunder of the next rainy season.
Other creatures are drawn to the damp soil left
behind by a passing thunderstorm. Male butter-
flies – especially swallowtails, sulphurs and tiny
blues – gather in masses at damp patches of
earth, sipping the salts dissolved by the rainwater.
If disturbed, they’ll burst into the air, swirling
around the puddle and eventually returning to
continue their feast.
This behavior, known as puddling, is believed
to enhance the attractiveness of the male and the
reproduction success of the female butterflies.
Females lose a lot of sodium during the egg-lay-
ing process. But they’re too busy nectaring and
laying eggs to replace it by spending time hanging
around the nearest mud puddle sipping sodium.
Instead, they compensate for the loss of minerals
by receiving a “nuptial gift” of sodium from the
male during mating.
Of course, insects and toads aren’t the only
ones to feel a little frisky during the rainy season.
Summer rains bring out the very best in our