G, R, C’ K
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bark, which turns jet black when it gets wet during rain- or snow-storms. The gray branches are ornamented with small evergreen leaves. Blackbrush orms vast pure stands across the desert floor and on scrubby slopes, giving the landscape a uniorm dark gray color. On Cactus Flat, blackbrush shares its home with juniper trees, whose gray bark and dark green leaves brighten an otherwise blackbrush gray backdrop with a savannah o juniper green trees. Blackbrush and juniper provide orage and construction materials or desert woodrats, mammals that have long tails, large ears, and large black eyes. Woodrats live in houses they build rom branches, twigs, sticks, and other debris. The huge, beaver-dam–shaped structures may be up to our eet across. They are usually constructed in a tree or on the ground at the base o a tree or rocky ledge. On Cactus Flat, woodrats use small twigs and leaves rom blackbrush and juniper to ashion large mounds at the bases o juniper trees, with juniper bark as “siding” on the outside. They build tunnels to various rooms inside their houses, which provide shelter rom extremes o desert temperatures in summer and winter and protection rom predators. Primarily nocturnal and vegetarian, woodrats survive on a diet o cactus, yucca pods, bark, berries, pinyon nuts, seeds, and green vegeta-tion. Woodrat houses, the new growth o blackbrush, and the goats would become my teachers as my research study commenced.From July through September o 1976, while we were building the ence, Sue and I observed that a juniper tree in one o the pastures had been struck by lightning the previous summer. The blackbrush shrubs around the tree had produced prodigious amounts o new growth, and we were eager to see how vigorously the goats would consume those nutritious new twigs. During the winter o 1977, we had leased ninety Angora goats rom the Navajo Nation, and we put fifeen goats in each o the six pastures we’d built. Nearly as soon as the study began, we watched the goats engage in two peculiar behaviors. The first occurred early in January, just a week afer we’d moved the goats to their new homes on Cactus Flats. Near dusk one evening, while the goats were actively oraging, we slowly herded them to the spot where the blackbrush shrubs encircled the old, dead juniper. We ully expected them to chow down on the nutritious new twigs. But to our amazement, only one goat sampled the new twigs, taking one small bite. The goats simply stood there, silently gazing at us. Afer a while, they walked away rom the dead juniper and began once again to orage enthusiastically on older twigs on other blackbrush shrubs in their pasture. I was shocked. I wondered what the goats were thinking as they