Beware the Shrew

size of a wine cork shot out from underneath the log and savagely attacked a grasshopper that I had placed on one of its trails. The shrew bit off the grasshopper's legs, then delivered the coup de grâce bite to the back of the head with such speed that I wasn't really sure I saw what I thought I saw.

The next attack came moments later. This time the shrew and grasshopper vanished under the log where I thought I heard muffled screams. The grasshopper was doomed. I felt guilty. Worse still, it all happened so fast, I missed the photo.

Oh well, the shrew had a family to raise. And that is precisely what this female was doing under the log, where four hairless, pink babies were hidden.

Shrews have a life expectancy of about a year, so courtship, mating and raising young must be done in a hurry. The dating game, which may include several vicious spats, lasts a few minutes; mating takes about 10 seconds; and the gestation period spans two weeks. From birth to maturity takes about 40 days. Females will have several litters of two to 10 young in their brief lifetimes.

Along with their cantankerous nature, shrews are, quite literally, little stinkers. The cute, thimble-sized critters with pointy, whiskered snouts that twitch constantly, emit a powerful stench. This "essence of shrew" attracts mates, marks territories and perhaps repels predators.

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CHRONICLING THE WEST EARLY DAY SCRIBES KNEW HOW TO SPELL H-Y-P-E

JOHN VAN DYKE, an Eastern college professor welcomed in society's highest circles, sent his editor a book manuscript about the Southwestern deserts. In an accompanying letter about the manuscript, he wrote: "It is a whole lot better than the swash which today is being turned out as 'literature' . . . and it will sell too, but not up in the hundreds of thousands. It is not so bad as that. My audience is only a few thousand, thank God."

Van Dyke was wrong. His 1901 book, The Desert, sold like hot tortillas and went into several reprints, inspiring generations to journey vicariously with the desert pilgrim, his "half Indian pony," and spunky fox terrier. One small hitch: Van Dyke's book "is a grand fraud," according to Peter Wild, an English professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He and Arizona editor, writer and historian Neil Carmony argue that Van Dyke experienced the desert by viewing it from trains, hotels and the porch of his brother's California home, rather than undertaking the death-defying trek as he claimed.

Certainly, specific details - "sluggish" rattlesnakes, "harmless" Gila monsters, "purple" saguaro blossoms - ring false. And yet Van Dyke's descriptions appear authentic despite inaccuracies, as in this passage, where he reversed the tarantula hawk's colors: "The tarantula-wasp, with his gorgeous orange-colored body and