The death of trees is actually part of the continuing cycle of life because it returns much needed nutrients to the soil. Termites play an important role in converting dead wood into substances useful to plants although they cannot digest the wood themselves. Tiny protozoans living in their intestines secrete digestive juices that do the job for them. Dead trees also provide nesting and resting places for various birds and mammals: Screech owls and mice may make their homes in hollow trees and logs, and so may the ringtail, gray fox, and bobcat. These four mammals are adept tree climbers. The brush mouse climbs to garner pine nuts, acorns and juniper berries, while the ringtail and gray fox add berries to supplement their largely meat diet. The bobcat, as sure-footed aloft as other cats, will take to the trees when pursued but prefers to hunt on the ground. The bobcat, so-called because of its short tail, limits his diet to mammals, birds, and insects. This smallest and most common of the wild cats prefers rocky canyons and outcrops in pine-oak woodlands. Hunting mostly at night and on the ground, he prowls on padded feet, hides for hours beside a game trail, and springs on his prey in one lethal pounce. The ringtail is the busiest of small predators. Strictly nocturnal, he covers a wide territory several times each night. He has much the same tastes as the raccoon, but without the latter’s fondness for water. The ringtail especially likes to prowl rocky ledges and canyon cliffs on the lookout for insects and small rodents. He climbs easily and hunts in trees for roosting and nesting birds. Water, those rare spots where it occurs permanently, can do astonishing things to a woodland. In a secluded canyon you’ll find a grotto no bigger than a room, with countless seeps trickling down the face of a high, nearly dry waterfall. At the foot of the fall, maidenhair ferns and stream orchids crowd beside a deep pool, while redbud, oaks, and maples canopy a burbling brook. The sun rarely reaches this rock garden, so that at midmorning it is significantly cooler than the grassy slopes nearby. The water in the main pool is even cooler. So many big boulders lie heaped across the canyon that few animals can reach the water, yet all sorts of creatures live here. You’ll find leeches in the pool, and, looking like a shelled peapod, a dead katydid’s exoskeleton gutted by water insects. You’ll hear a canyon wren echoing its own song, and spy tiny canyon tree frogs clinging to trees and rocks with sticky little suction-cup mounted toes. Tiniest are the mites living in parasitic comfort on the tree frogs. Such microenvironments stand in surprising contrast to the grandiose environment of the mountain masses surrounding you here in the Chisos, and elsewhere.