Word: gila
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Herpetologist William H. Woodin III of Tucson, Ariz, is devoted to one of the oddest of odd scientific occupations. Last week he was scurrying round the desert taking the temperatures of Gila monsters...
This involves a tricky operation. At this time of the year, the Gila monsters (thick-bodied venomous lizards with skins like orange and black beadwork) avoid the summer heat, come out only at night. So Woodin hunts them at night by jeep. After the sun has set, the monsters like to lie on the pavement, enjoying its lingering warmth. Woodin steps up to the beaded, venomous patient, pins its neck down with a forked stick, and, with practiced skill, slips a specially made, quick-registering clinical thermometer into the beast's rectum...
Garden on the Moon. The greater part of Nevada (sixth largest state in the Union) is as bleak and uninhabited as the craters of the moon. The Federal Government owns 87% of the whole place, rocks, rattlesnakes, Gila monsters and all, and its total population comes to 167,000 souls, only a few more than Bridgeport, Conn. It has only three industries-ranching, mining and the care and feeding of tourists. But arid Nevada has bloomed like a garden for Norman Biltz...
...canyon-tromping outdoor types in most of the Rocky Mountain states. In spring he ships them by air as far away as Detroit. As soon as they eat a few aphids, they begin to reproduce. The eggs laid by the females hatch into larvae that look like miniature Gila monsters and devour up to 50 aphids a day. In around 20 days the larvae are ready to reproduce, too. "We just plant the seeds," says Pappy, "it's the multiplication does the work...
...middle-aged stoop, his brownish hair and open countenance. Back in 1935, as a result, he had little difficulty in selling acres & acres of steep, arid, brush-covered land in the barren hills above Los Angeles County's Placerita Canyon. The tract looked like a rest home for Gila monsters, but he got $1,950 an acre for it-just $1,900 more than he had paid...