A spirited primer in Sonoran Desert ecology, cloaked in a memoir of
gardening. To judge by this graceful little study of insects and
desert plants, Alcock (The Masked Bobwhite Rides Again, 1993), a
zoologist at Arizona State University, is a suburban neighbor's
nightmare. First, he replaced his Bermuda-grass lawn with gravel,
cacti, and succulents to replicate the look of the desert before
humans remade it. Next, he festooned his yard with cowpies
carefully selected for size, weight, and dryness, "the creme de la
creme of termite chow, as far as Gnathamitermes are concerned,"
whereafter that voracious insect would find hospitable quarters in
his domain. Then he seeded his property with flowers to attract a
flotilla of winged and crawling creatures, "carpenter bees and
globe mallow bees, brittlebush aphids and milkweed aphids, these
and many other insects." Thus equipped with a back-door laboratory
for ecological studies, Alcock spent the next few years observing
what happened; his observations provided him with the field notes
from which this book is made. Alcock fills his pages with asides on
the insects he has studied for so long at close hand. We learn,
among other things, that female praying mantises have gotten a bad
rap as spousal murderers; rising to their defense, he observes that
"the extent of female consumption of males during copulation had
been greatly exaggerated." We learn as well that aphids are to be
prized, the occasional loss of a rosebush or milkweed plant aside,
for their marvelous properties: They reproduce "without the curious
beings we call males" and otherwise develop and mutate in
unexpected ways. Ever original, Alcock encourages readers to view
the desert with new eyes through this fine contribution to
arid-lands literature. (Kirkus Reviews)
With canny insight and bone-dry wit, John Alcock, a specialist in
the ecology of the American Southwest, introduces us to the lives
and loves of desert insects as they forage through his backyard
oasis. Creating his own desert garden behind his suburban home in
Tempe, Arizona, Alcock scrutinizes every square inch of soil
detailing the exotic plant life he finds and offering tips on its
peccadilloes and preservation. The true heroes of this story,
however, are the bugs of Alcock's backyard. We are drawn into
complex plots almost biblical in nature of life and love, survival
and death. Two male earwigs caught in each other's pincers battle
for a prized female. A female mantis finishes copulating, beheads
her mate, and cannibalizes his body for its precious protein. With
each detail, Alcock pieces together the entire ecosystem of his
desert paradise. Always amusing and instructive, and sometimes
dramatic, In a Desert Garden provides an eye-opening meditation on
the joys of planting, weeding, pruning, and, most of all,
bug-hunting.
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