For many people the spirit of the desert is embodied in the vulture tirelessly circling empty skies above a bleak and barren land, the harvester of death keeping watch over desolation. But the desert is far from lifeless or the vulture wouldn’t be on patrol. The meager shrubs are miracles of adaptation and those seeming barren wastes rustle under the feet of countless busy creatures. Across the eons evolutionary selection has produced a different design for living within each species, yet all are subject to the same law. Heat and aridity are the chief factors controlling all Chihuahuan Desert life. Most desert creatures stay in hiding during the day, keeping out of the sun in underground burrows, under rocks, or in the shrubs’ sparse shade. Many birds and most larger mammals don’t even visit the desert during the heat of the day. And although plants cannot crawl out from under the sun, nature has protected them by different means. Probably the best way to see the living desert is to get out and walk and look. Study a plot of shrub desert in a single day and night. The most obvious desert dwellers, and sometimes the only living things you will see, are the plants. These vary from one stretch of desert to another because different species prefer different living conditions. But you will likely find plants in several categories, including woody and fibrous shrubs, cactuses, and other succulents. All have their own ways of resisting heat and drought, and all provide food or shelter to one or another special animal. If success can be judged by sheer numbers, then the most successful desert shrub must be creosotebush, an evergreen bush that can make a living on the poorest and driest soils. You cannot mistake it for any other. The ground around it is apt to be bare and the individual bushes so evenly spaced that they look hand planted. This characteristic creosotebush pattern is probably caused by root competition for scant moisture. Each creosotebush has a long taproot reaching down maybe 9 meters (30 feet) to find underground water, while a network of shallow roots spreads far and wide to capture every drop of surface moisture. The plant protects itself from moisture loss by giving its dark green leaves a light-reflecting coat of resin. In the springtime, and often after rain, it bursts into brief yellow flower. It fruits in fuzzy little white balls, and you sometimes see a plant bearing both fruits and flowers.