Radical Reader

Cover-Honor Roll

TPW Magazine, March 2010
If you don't have a copy of the TPW magazine, you may print a copy of Honor Roll: Texas Symbols (pdf).

How closely did you read Keep Texas Wild? See if you can answered these questions correctly:

  • What has a tuna? The prickly pear cactus. The fruit is called a tuna.
  • What squirts blood? The Texas horned lizard, when threatened, can hiss, inflate its body and squirt blood from its eyes to scare predators.
  • Texas is home to the world's largest group of what? Mexican free-tailed bats. During the spring and summer, Bracken Cave in Central Texas is home to a nursery colony of bats. Mothers and pups stream out of the cave every night in a swirl like a tornado. They eat lots of bugs and then return as the sun comes up to sleep during the day.
  • What travels 3,000 miles every spring and fall?Generations of monarch butterfly make this incredible journey every spring and fall to lay eggs, find food and reproduce. In Central Mexico, Monarch's winter habitat, the people there celebrate the arrival of the butterflies as if the spirits of their ancestors have returned for a visit. So many Monarchs live there during the winter that the trees are covered in butterflies.
  • What turns from white to purple?The white center on the bluebonnet turns purple after it is pollinated. The color white attracts bees to the flower's center. When you see bluebonnets this spring, see if the centers are white or purple.