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Excellent condition or better.

47 pages

A lobster this

size would take

a long time to eat,

and it certainly

took these Rangers

a long time to make!

Red paint makes it

look fresh out of the

pot. And that's...

Snow

Foolin'

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DECEMBER 1979

Volume 13, Number 12

3 Snow Foolin'

6 Ranger Rick & His Friends

9 Nature Club News

10 The Perfect Tree

14 Reindeer

16 Warm Tips for Winter Trips R

(Answers to Game)

17 The Berry Birds

20 Your Favorite Wild Animals

24a 1980 Calendar Poster

26 When Petroleum Was King J

32 Dippy, a Kangaroo Rat

36 Ollie Otter's Stamp Out Art

41 Winter Poems

42 Salamander Secrets

About the Covers:

Front: Steller's Jay by Phil A. Dotson/Photo

Researchers. Campers in western evergreen

forests sometimes get mad at these blue

jays for stealing their food.

Back: Bull Elk by Les Blacklock. With sharp

antlers and hooves, this bull doesn't have

to worry much about enemies. His main

problem is finding enough food in winter.

Find out how he does it in next month's

Ranger Rick.

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you see them,

now you don't. A

whole flock of cedar wax-

wings seems to appear from

nowhere. One moment trees

and bushes ripe with berries

are covered with pale brown

crested birds. Blink your eyes

and the birds may disappear.

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For some reason, or perhaps

no reason at all, the flock will

take off. The birds may come

back and they may not. Even

bird scientists can't be sure

where or when cedar wax-

wings will turn up next.

Cedar waxwings travel in

flocks. Sometimes as many as

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100 fly together. Yet even if a

waxwing flock is nearby, you

chirp.

might not hear it. Cedar

waxwings don't sing or c

When they do make a sound

it usually is a soft hiss.

A flock travels wherever it

can find ripe berries. When

the ripe food in one spot is

gone, the birds have to fly

somewhere else to find

more-sometimes over long

distances.

Since waxwings need

plenty of ripe fruit to feed

their young, they nest later in

the year than other birds do.

Sometimes they are still rais-

ing young in September.

Although baby waxwings

are fed berries a few days

after they hatch, their very

first food is insects. Their par-

ents sometimes eat insects

too. In fact some

people call

cedar waxwings canker birds.

becausot

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subjects felt lucky and very satisfied.

All except one girl. Her name was

Tamarra. She was very curious and never

accepted things the way they were. She

kept looking around and wondering:

Where do all these plastic things come

from? How are plastics made? Where

does the old plastic go?

No one could give her an answer. They

were too busy shuffling plastic things in

and out of their houses. All they would

say was: "Plastics come from the North-

ern Half of the Kingdom on the New-

Plastic Trucks. They're made in the

Magic Plastics Center. And used plastics

go back north on the Old-Plastics

Trucks."

Tamarra knew all of that. She wanted

to know more. For days she watched

the stream of trucks coming and going.

Sometimes the traffic made her feel dizzy.

One day the King was visiting her

town, making sure everyone was happy

and had enough plastics.

Tamarra ran up to the King and cried,

"I'm not happy. I want to know where

plastics come from, what goes on at that

Magic Plastics Center, and..."

The King realized there'd be no peace

until her questions were answered. So he

Please turn the page

BALL

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ONCE

NCE UPON A TIME there was a

very special land called Thearth. This

land had existed through many ages -

the Age of Darkness, the Age of Light

and the Age of Wood. At the time of this

story Thearth had been for a long time in

the Age of Plastics, and Petroleum was

King.

The people in Thearth were all very

happy. Everything they owned was made

of beautiful plastics. And they got pretty

new things every day.

The King's workers would bring the

new brightly-colored plastics from the

Magic Plastics Center in the Northern

Half of the Kingdom. There were plastic

houses, plastic telephones, refrigerators,

tables, chairs, toys, curtains, clothes and

plastic wrappings and bags. The King's

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by Frances W. Zweifel

IGHT has come to the Arizona

desert, cooling the hot ground.

Silver moonlight pours down on

the cacti and thorny bushes.

Under a catclaw bush two little eyes

peek from a round, black hole. The eyes

belong to Dippy, a kangaroo rat. She is

sitting inside the entrance of her bur-

row, waiting for darkness to come. Then

it will be safe for her to begin searching

for food..

An owl calls from a live oak tree. A

cricket hops around a rock and pauses

in the bright moonlight. Suddenly a

grasshopper mouse dashes out from

the shadows and snatches the insect.

The mouse crunches the cricket and

eats it quickly. Just as he finishes the

last piece, an owl swoops out of the

night on silent wings. It grabs the

mouse in its claws or talons, and flies

away as silently as it came.

Everyone is hungry tonight!

The moon sets at last. Dippy peers

out of her doorway. All is quiet. She

digs with her strong hind feet and fills

the entrance of her burrow with dirt.

She hops down a path which leads

around the burrow until she comes

to a flat, dusty area. Here she pauses,

watching and listening again for danger.

Nothing moves.

Dippy hops to the middle of the flat

area and suddenly rolls in the dust. She

hops to the shelter of a bush and

picks up her long

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themselves and go to sleep,

or estivate (ES-tih-vate).

What do they eat?

Most salamanders are

night hunters that eat insects,

worms, slugs, snails and

other small creatures. One

kind eats water plants called

algae, and a few kinds may

even eat smaller salamanders.

How do they breathe?

Most salamanders take in,

or absorb, right through their

wet skin, the oxygen they

need. If their skin becomes

dry they are unable to

breathe. Others may breathe

with lungs, but about half of

the kinds of salamanders

have no lungs at all.

Salamander larvae breathe

with gills. Unlike fish, sala-

manders have gills on the

outside of their throats. As

water passes over the gills,

they take in oxygen.

Please turn the page

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by James R. Newton

Long ago, people believed

that salamanders could live in

fire or even put a fire out.

They also believed that a

salamander's bite was poison-

ous enough to kill a human.

Now we know that these

ideas are only superstitions.

Salamanders can't live in fire,

of course, and they're really

harmless to humans. But

they are very strange, fas-

cinating creatures. Do you

know any salamander se-

crets? Here's your chance to

find out.

What is the difference

between a salamander

and a lizard?

They look somewhat alike,

it's true. But salamanders and

lizards belong to two very

different groups of animals.

Lizards are reptiles and are

related to such animals as

snakes, turtles and alligators.

They have dry, scaly skin.

Many lizards can live in hot,

drunlaces.