OCR Text |
Show Novel Entertainment To Be Had In Zion National Park Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny of the movies come to life here at Zion National Park. For this beautiful canyon, long noted for its scenic grandeur, harbors har-bors a collection of tiny animal inhabitants who sometimes for pure comedy, put their cinema counterparts to shame. There are squirrels who steal milk from your doorstep, tree frogs who imitate im-itate the bleat of a sheep, flying birds who scratch for their food like a chicken and crazy lizards who leave you their tails when you try to catch them. Ranger Naturalist A. R. Simmons Sim-mons of the National Parks Service Ser-vice reported the loss of his morning morn-ing milk delivery recently. He watched a Utah rock squirrel carefully care-fully "case" his front porch, then nimbly push over the bottle and poke out the cardboard cap with a paw. Tourists themselves, from every state in the union, relate at Zion Lodge after a day's hike, that they heard sheep bleating in the canyon where there are no sheep. Simons reveals nature's hoax by explaining that what the visitors heard were tree frogs. These, he says, are tiny species of frogdom who perch in trees, continually giving forth with their eerie sounds. Visitors are similarly baffled by the spurred towhill, a Zion bird which flies from the treetops with great speed to land on the ground and scratch for its food just like an earthbound chicken. Simmons says the towhill is the only bird which operates in this fashion. One of his more humerous problems, pro-blems, Simmons states, is to soothe the feelings of tenderhearted tender-hearted tourists who are constantly constant-ly returning from exploratory trips in the canyon carrying a lizard's liz-ard's tail in their hands. The visitors vis-itors fear they have maimed ; the lizard for life. The ranger calms them with the explanation that the sly serpent cleverly sheds his tail just as a man sheds the seat of his pants to a neighbors dog when necessary. The lizard's tail dropping is an escape mechanism, with no harm done. In almost no time at all the appendage is replaced. |