WHAT WITH ALL THE CIVILIZED FEATURES
of Palm Springs
– the art museum, the Sinatra-related cocktail lounges, the shops
along Palm Canyon Drive – I’d nearly forgotten that we were in the
middle of the Colorado Desert. To orient ourselves, Merry and I
headed to a 1,200-acre zoo and botanical garden devoted to animals
and plants that manage to thrive somehow in this sun-scorched,
stone-dry landscape.
The most remarkable animal we met at the Living Desert,
though, was a primate of the species
Homo sapiens
– our amusing,
informative guide, Bruce Elwood. The charming volunteer poured out
a stream of corn-pone jokes and deep knowledge about the wonders
of deserts, both here and around the world.
As we strolled through the botanical garden, Bruce used his car
key to scrape white scale off a cactus, then crushed it, whereupon it
turned scarlet. “This is cochineal,” he explained, “the stuff that turned
the robes of European kings red. It’s still used today – for instance, to
make pink grapefruit juice pink.”
Later Bruce pointed to a thick-billed parrot, the last parrot
species in North America. “We used to have one in our bird show,” he
recalled. “It spoke three words, including ‘Oh-oh.’”
Bruce: “You’re almost extinct.”
Bird: “Oh-oh!”
We also met two 40-pound bobcat brothers that had never
been separated, spotted a great horned owl high in a grove of fan
palms, and marveled at the world’s smallest fox, the fennec of Africa,
which weighs less than three-and-a-half pounds. (Its unusually large
ears dissipate the heat of its native Sahara. “Ear conditioning,” noted
Bruce.) But our favorite animal sighting was Nemo, a jaguar that
padded directly up to us and stopped with his huge head just inches
116
summer
|
fall
TRAVEL
