As Halloween approaches, you may feel bombarded by pumpkins, spiders, and bats. Bats in particular stir fear in some people, who perceive them as creatures of darkness and carriers of rabies. But you’re more likely to get rabies from a skunk or raccoon bite than a bat bite. These days, we should actually be more afraid of losing these magnificent and ecologically important animals, forever.

That’s because a disease has been destroying bat colonies in the northeastern United States and is now spreading south and west across the country. What is this devastating disease? And are West Texas' bats at risk?

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Wheee!

That’s Patty Manning, mimicking the way hummingbird bush and desert petunia scatter their seeds. Manning runs Sul Ross State University’s native-plant greenhouses in Alpine, Texas. So she appreciates the diverse strategies desert plants have evolved to spread around their offspring. Hummingbird bush and desert petunia have little club-shaped fruits—fruits being the plant part that usually encloses seeds. After these fruits dry out, they split.

And there’s a mechanism inside that actually flings the seed. You can hear them pop. It usually happens when the fruit is exposed to some amount of moisture. It pops it open and sends the little seed inside flying. They’re sort of disc-shaped. 

So these ballistic discusses are hurled every which way. How do other plants in the Chihuahuan Desert region disperse their seeds?

Your lips are chapped. Your hair unruly. Doorknobs greet you with an electric shock. The dry season has arrived in the Chihuahuan Desert region, and months of parching wind and cold separate us from summer’s rains. While the aridity at times seems a hardship for us, it poses a true survival test for wildlife. How do desert animals get enough water to live? And how do they keep from drying out?

Long before pines became Christmas trees, people around the world venerated and used these fragrant evergreens, from ancient Aztecs to ancient Greeks. Today, pines are some of the world’s most commercially important trees. Their wood is valued as timber and paper pulp, their nuts eaten as food, and their resin used in turpentine and other products. But pines are perhaps even more important as a food source for wildlife. Who dines on pines in the Chihuahuan Desert region?

Writer J. Frank Dobie once recalled an evening performance on his father’s Texas ranch in the early 1900s. The vaqueros had butchered a steer that afternoon, and after feasting on the fresh beef, they burst into song. Coyotes soon joined their ballad. “Cantad, amigos!” the vaqueros cheered to their wild accompanists, the men’s voices often indistinguishable from the coyotes’ chorus.

Dobie wished he could be sung to sleep every night and awoken every day by such canine amigos. But not everyone has regarded coyotes so amiably, viewing them instead as livestock-killing varmints. Who are these desert vocalists? And do they deserve their bad-dog reputation?

On a freezing dawn at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, thousands of sandhill cranes are slowly and noisily beginning their day. In small groups, the cranes hoist their hefty red-capped forms from glimmering ponds. Then they glide elegantly over amber-lit grasslands and cottonwoods, and disappear against distant mauve mountains. As pristine as this wildlife spectacle appears, the setting is far from natural. What is this place? And how has it been specially crafted for these birds?

Is your nose streaming? Are your eyes watering? Feeling a little listless? You may have pollen to thank. As all hay-fever sufferers will tell you, this is a bad year for pollen. Allergists consider any amount of pollen above 150 grains per cubic meter to be an extremely high pollen count. This year, juniper pollen is being recorded at densities up to 23,000 grains per cubic meter. Is all that pollen good for anything besides making you miserable?

Black bears were once wiped out from the area that’s now Big Bend National Park. Usually, when a species disappears from a place, restoring it requires tremendous human intervention. But in recent decades, bears have come back to the park on their own. How did this happen? And what’s the outlook for the future of black bears here?

When the morning whistle blows on Mimms Ranch, the cattle get to work. This herd has a job that might surprise a lot of people: improving the health of a desert grassland and its ability to absorb water. How are they doing it?

They eat roadkill. They urinate on themselves. When frightened, they vomit. Forget sweet calls or melodic songs; the only sounds these birds are likely to utter are grunts or a rasping hiss. With their bald, red heads and feathers fit for funeral attire, turkey vultures would probably place last in an avian beauty contest. Do you ever find yourself wishing we had a more charming harbinger of spring?

To most buyers, even eight dollars an acre was too high a price for the worn-out Wisconsin farm with its rickety old chicken shack. Once covered in forest, it had been logged, burned, and overgrazed. But in 1935, Aldo Leopold bought the barren scrap of earth. And he cultivated a relationship with it that would ultimately earn him a place alongside Henry David Thoreau in history. Who was Leopold? And how did he revolutionize our thinking about the natural world?

Butterflies throng golden lantana, bees swarm fragrant agarita, and hummingbirds sip from red yucca. These couplings aren’t accidental. They’re the result of marketing wizardry, with each plant vying for the attention of specific passersby who will help it reproduce. How do plants attract pollinators?

The concert starts with a mighty summer storm. Thunder stirs the singers from their subterranean slumber. They convene at an impromptu stage—maybe a rain-filled arroyo, maybe a waterlogged ditch. And just as the curtain of evening falls, the chorus begins. Who are these vocalists? And what’s the occasion for their performance?

During the last Ice Age, woodlands covered much of the Chihuahuan Desert region. But as the climate warmed and dried, these trees died back. Some hardy species have hung on though, and among them are several types of oaks. Who are these tenacious survivors? And what desert animals depend on them today?