They tend to be small, thick and covered with a thick cuticle (outer layer). These plants include: yuccas, ocotillo, turpentine bush, prickly pears, false mesquite, sotol, ephedras, agaves and brittlebush. The spiny nature of many plants in semiarid deserts provides protection in a hazardous environment. Many plants have silvery or glossy leaves, allowing them to reflect more radiant energy. These plants often have an unfavourable odor or taste. Semiarid plants include: Creosote bush, bur sage, white thorn, cat claw, mesquite, brittle bushes, lyciums, and jujube. Animals In hot and dry deserts the animals include small nocturnal (active at night) carnivores. The dominant animals are burrowers and kangaroo rats. There are also insects, arachnids, reptiles and birds. The animals stay inactive in protected hideaways during the hot day and come out to forage at dusk, dawn or at night, when the desert is cooler.
face. He smiled in reaction before launching into more cross-examination. His questions were different now, though, not as easily answered. He wanted to know what I missed about home, insisting on descriptions of anything he wasn't familiar with. We sat in front of Charlie's house for hours, as the sky darkened and rain plummeted around us in a sudden deluge. I tried to describe impossible things like the scent of creosote -- bitter, slightly resinous, but still pleasant -- the high, keening sound of the cicadas in July, the feathery barrenness of the trees, the very size of the sky, extending white-blue from horizon to horizon, barely interrupted by the low mountains covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain was why it was so beautiful to me -- to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny vegetation that often looked half dead, a beauty that had
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