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Susan Tweit

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.

Look for Susan's forthcoming book, Seasons on the Pacific Coast, due out from Chronicle Books in 1999. She is currently writing a memoir, Navigating by the Stars.

Susan has a new web site! She invites you to come visit. Her books are available there, at local bookstores, or on-line through BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com (search by author for Susan Tweit).

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 Articles by this Author

Dancing Devils, Whirling Winds

Dust devils certainly seem like magic, springing up suddenly from the hot ground, taking pale form from the soil they carry, and dancing whichever way they will. Creatures of warm climates and dry country, dust devils are children of the sun.

Tortugas Mountain

A small hump-backed mountain rises above East Mesa, midway between Las Cruces and the Organ Mountains. It is often called "A" Mountain for the Aggies "A" blazed on its west side like a gargantuan modern pictograph. But I prefer its older name, Tortugas, or "Tortoise" Mountain, for its resemblance - when viewed from the south - to a huge tortoise slowly ascending the bajada.

Chihuahua Chub

When Chihuahua chub were first collected in 1851, the notes accompanying the fish mistakenly recorded the collection location as "Rio Mimbres, tributary of the Gila," so the little fish were given the genus name Gila, commemorating the Gila River. However, the Mimbres is not a tributary of the Gila, nor are Chihuahua chub found in the Gila River. So much for scientific accuracy!

Coyotes

The last hundred-fifty years have been tough ones for many of the West's wild creatures: the flood tide of humans, with our appetite for space and resources, has pushed out many, from bison to tiny desert fish. We have been hardest on predators - bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks - branding them "dangerous," slaughtering them by the millions. Many have disappeared or retreated to protected places. But not wily coyotes - they thrive. And, as urban and city habitat spreads, coyotes are moving in next door, their lively voices echoing through town.

Cranes in Columbus

From several miles away, we spotted great swirls of cranes in the air over the fields. As we neared his house, we could see hundreds of the gray, long-necked and long-legged birds picking their way through the straw-colored stubble. When we stopped and rolled down the car windows, the wind brought us the purring murmur of thousands of sandhill voices. Cranes probed the soil for insects and seeds with spearlike beaks, cranes jumped and bowed on long, graceful legs, cranes preened iron-gray feathers, cranes took to the air on wide wings as we drove slowly along the fields. After an hour of careful counting we estimated that we'd seen at least 4,000 sandhill cranes. What an unexpected surprise!

Gila monster

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.

Grizzly Tracks

Rocky Mountain grizzlies are solitary except during mating season. They mate in June and July, hibernate from October until April, and only bear cubs every other year or every several years. In a warmer climate, with food available more of the year, did our southern plains grizzlies mate earlier? Hibernate for fewer months? Move into the desert during the rainy season to dig for flowering bulbs and roots? Were they truly more aggressive than the Rocky Mountain silvertips? We cannot know: except for the stories, and the long-clawed footprints chipped into the rock, they are gone.

Kangaroo rats

Kangaroo rats are not rats at all; nor are they kangaroos. These rodents are so named because they look like tiny kangaroos, with an upright, hopping gait, huge hind legs and feet, and a long, furry tail which comprises nearly two-thirds of their foot-or-so total length.

Katydids

Katydids are closely related to grasshoppers and crickets, but belong to their own family, Tettigoniidae (Tet-ee-gohn-ee-id-ee), Greek for "small singing insect." Their common name captures the sound of their clicking mating calls: ka-ty-DID or ka-ty-did-NOT. On warm late summer and early fall nights, katydids' dry songs sound as often as 60 times a minute or up to 50 million times in a season. Large choruses of katydids achieve a striking synchronicity. When two katydids sing together, they alternate, calling and replying, but at half-speed. The effect is the same as if only one were singing, but in stereo. When dozens or hundreds of katydids chorus, each alternates with his closest neighbor. Such synchronous groups produce a pulsing wave of sound in still night air.

Moonlight serenades - Mockingbirds

Male mockingbirds exercise their vocal artistry most during the early spring and summer mating seasons. They sing for reasons similar to those which motivate human males to cruise city streets: to advertise their maleness, attract mates, discourage competitors, and to delineate their territories. The more extensive his vocal repertoire, the better chance a male mockingbird has of mimicking and driving away other birds, thereby gaining a larger share of habitat, and more access to the female listening audience. The songsters pick high perches - television antennas, utility poles, or tall cacti, shrubs, or trees - to better broadcast their signals. Unmated males sometimes sing all night long!

Mountain Lions

Mountain lions, also called cougars, pumas, or simply leones, are the second largest cat in the Americas. (Only jaguars are larger.) Full-grown male leones weigh around 160 pounds (females weigh in at about 135 pounds), and measure up to seven feet from nose to the end of their long tail. These big cats were once the most widespread wild cat in the Americas, ranging from Patagonia to Canada, and from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic. These days, mountain lions are much less common, but lion populations are still healthy in New Mexico because of the rugged terrain and abundant habitat.

Pack rats

Pack rats are particularly attracted to shiny objects - watches, jewelry, coins, and, of course, aluminum cans. One nest even sported an upper denture plate! An average den of a desert-dwelling pack rat contains about 20 cubic feet of material - enough to fill a trash bag‹and may reach 4.5 feet high by 2 feet wide.

Piñacate beetles

Piñacate beetles are among the most conspicuous insects in the Southwest. Over a hundred species live from lowland deserts to foothills to piñon-juniper woodlands. Feeding on minute particles of wind-blown organic matter and fungus, Piñacate beetles help recycle nutrients and keep arid-country soils fertile.

Prairie dogs

Prairie dogs are colonial critters, living in extensive colonies of hundreds to millions of individual animals. Each prairie dog colony is divided into half-acre neighborhoods called coteries, inhabited by one male, several females, and the young of the year. Coterie members greet each other by "kissing," gently touching noses and lips.

Quail

Quail are among the desert's most beloved birds. Gregarious and loquacious, they live in groups and fill the air with their soft whistles, clucks and metallic plinking sounds. Their habits make quail easily seen and heard. In The Mysterious Lands, Ann Zwinger describes Gambel's quail: "They remind me of charming wind-up toys - bustling about with staccato movements, officiously giving each other directions as they forage among the creosote bushes. In winter, quail often congregate in flocks of one or two hundred birds; in summer, they split up into family-group coveys of a dozen or so. They graze the desert like flocks of small chickens, munching on succulent plants, fruits and seeds, and insects."


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