Fortunately for the creosotebush, its taste is so unpleasant that few large animals care to eat it. But the little creosotebush grasshopper spends his whole life living and nibbling on the shrub. You’ll hear him chirping away in a creosotebush, but unless he jumps you may never find him. He’s a great ventriloquist who across countless generations has evolved protective coloring, the same dark green as creosote leaves, marked with the same red and white of its little stems and fruits. You may never see the mottled gray and black walking-stick insect either, who sticks his front legs straight out in front of him to look exactly like a woody creosotebush twig. Creosotebush holds the desert soil as blowing sands heap hummocks around its stems, and these make favorite burrowing sites for all sorts of little desert rodents and reptiles. Look under almost any creosotebush, and you will see their holes. You may even see a busy line of ants taking bits of creosote leaf and fruit to an underground nest. [Illustration: The ocotillo also goes by the name coachwhip because it so often looks like a bunch of buggy whips stuck in the ground. However, in the springtime following a wet winter, those dead-looking stalks are adorned with green leaves and topped by brilliant red flower clusters. The ocotillo is common throughout both the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts.] Another curious woody shrub resembles a sheaf of coachwhips. If you see ocotillo after rain, it will look like a green fountain. If you see it during a dry spell, you may think it is dead. Not so. Ocotillo puts on a fresh close-fitting suit of green leaves whenever it rains. Then as soil and air dry out, it sheds its leaves right down to the bare brown stems. This cuts back on the plant’s water needs. Moisture loss is further reduced by resinous cells that form the inner bark. In springtime the tip of each ocotillo wand burns with a cluster of scarlet flowers. Cactuses have done away with leaves altogether, thus reducing their surface area and cutting down on moisture loss. Although they look dry and forbidding, inside that harsh exterior their flesh is moist and succulent. The food-making function has been taken over by the thick, green, wax-covered stems. And since the stems are also used to store water, they have ballooned into a weird and wonderful assortment of shapes and sizes. You’ll find the mound-building strawberry cactus with its mass of finger-like heads, the Texas rainbow cactus with its small group of cylindrical heads topped by bright yellow flowers, the tuber-like living rock, the dog and cane cholla, and the great sprawling pricklypear that lifts its beavertails from desert flat to mountaintop.