Susan J. Tweit is a scientist who evolved into an award-winning writer and radio commentator. She is the author of five books for adults, including Barren, Wild, & Worthless: Living in the Chihuahuan Desert, personal stories about the history and natural history of Southern New Mexico, The Great Southwest Nature Factbook, a browser's guide to nature in the Southwest, from A to Z, and Seasons in the Desert: A Naturalist's Notebook, from Chronicle books. She has also written two children's books, Meet the Wild Southwest: Land of Hoodoos & Gila Monsters (Alaska Northwest Books) and City Foxes, a picture book which was named one of the Outstanding Science Books for Children for 1998.
Her "Wild Lives" radio commentaries are heard three times weekly on KRWG-FM, Southern New Mexico public radio, and her columns run in the Las Cruces Sun News. Susan's essays and stories have appeared in Harrowsmith Country Life, New Mexico, Sierra, Cricket, Bloomsbury Review, and other magazines. She is the co-founder of Las Cruces' wildly popular - and fun - Border Book Festival. She is currently living in Colorado with her husband, Richard Cabe, and dog, Perdida Imelda.
Susan is a popular public speaker and leader of workshops. Her stories of our natural and human history have captivated a wide variety of audiences, including school classes, workshops, banquets, and professional meetings. As Bloomsbury Review put it, she brings the precision of a scientist and the passion of a poet, and is able to refocus readers' vision and ignite their imaginations.
Susan has a new web site! She invites you to come visit. Her books are available there, at local bookstores, or on-line through http://BarnesandNoble.com and http://Amazon.com (search by author for Susan Tweit).
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Gila monsters and their cousins, Mexican beaded lizards, are the only two venomous lizards in the world. These "monstruos" - monsters, in Spanish - rely on a very simple venom-dispensing method. They bite their victim and hold fast; glands under the skin in their lower jaw secrete venom, which drips into the wound. Gila monster venom can kill small animals. In humans, the venom is severely painful, and causes swelling, nausea, and weakness, but it is not fatal.
Gila monsters are deceptive. They look and sound horrific, but these monstruos are nine-tenths bluff and bluster. Their bright colors shout, "Beware - I am venomous!" Their hissing stance and stout body says "Back off!" But a Gila monster's usual response to a threat is to lumber away. It bites only as a last resort.
It is not easy to see a Gila monster. These big lizards spend nearly all their lives - over 95 percent of their time, according one study - snoozing in rocky or earthen shelters. But Gila monsters move around through the year, picking their dens to suit the season: In winter, they select south- or east-facing crevices; in spring, they choose for morning sun and afternoon shade; in summer's heat, they take to the earth in burrows that they dig themselves or find abandoned packrat mounds. Monstruos return to the same crevices and burrows year after year.
Gila monsters are least active in winter, when food is scarce: they snooze and metabolize the fat stored in their sausagelike tails. A monstruo emerging from its den in spring is hungry. It lumbers off, on the hunt for food, but not just any food. Gila monsters' taste runs to tender young animals or eggs, snatched from nests on or in the ground: baby cottontails, ground squirrels, and baby birds; bird or tortoise eggs; and young lizards. When a monstruo kills suitable prey, it eats - a lot. The big lizard consumes up to half its body weight in one meal, then waddles away. Fat stored from one stomach-filling feast can maintain a snoozing lizard for a year or more - until food is plentiful again.
I feel lucky to have seen of these astonishing monstruos. If I never see another one, I am glad to know that they are there, snoozing through their lives in between feasts.