The Description of Animals in "The Land of Little Rain"

One of the most striking and interesting chapters that I found in Austin’s “The Land of Little Rain” was The Scavengers, particularly because of how she described the different animals of the desert and how they interact with one another in this ecosystem.

I was, however, interested in one line in particular, which was when Austin described how different animals feed off of the carrion that they manage to find when food sources may be scarce. She stated, “Once at Red Rock, in a year of green pasture, which is a bad time for scavengers, we saw two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion, and only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.”

What interested me the most about this line was how Austin managed to describe the interaction of the various animals living together. I think that it is quite unusual to observe such a variety of different species of animals feeding and sharing a single piece of food. Usually, it would be suspected that only animals of the same species would even consider sharing food because many would probably be inclined to be territorial to what they manage to find.

This also touches on a discussion point that was brought up, which is that Austin may sometimes humanize her description of nature especially in this particular chapter. This could be noted in the above quote in how she described the presence of the coyote eating the communal piece of food. She described the animal as being “ashamed of the company,” and this may be because it is the only animal in the group that is not a bird, and therefore may seem out of place.