Desert Tidbits: Water Air-Lift to Save Wild Burros

It is hitting 110F before high noon out in the Mojave, and the wild burros are feeling the pain. An alert rancher spotted fifty-six of them, dead from dehydration, their bodies clogging Fenner Springs, which is actually inside a old mine shaft, over in Piute Mountain Wilderness. Apparently, the spring had gone dry. 

The thirteen who remained -- seen above -- were in dire straits. So, the rancher called BLM, and a water air-lift was organized. So far, they have set up troughs and flown in about 5,000 gallons. The county also trucked in 750 gallons.

The crew in the photo will probably be rounded up at some point, taken out to the Ridgecrest Regional Wild Horse and Burro Corrals,  and put up for adoption. Burros aren't bad critters to have around, so if you are interested in adopting one, you can click that link and find out how to get started.

I am interested in this, and am thinking to go up to Ridgecrest once I get a trailer. You know...  I have been looking around for a good, used, single or double horse trailer for a while now, and you would think they are easy to find, but for some reason they don't come on the market all that often anymore. You can get big ones easy enough, but the small ones are tough to find.

And, as long as there is room for rumination, I should note that Fenner Springs is named after Fenner, California, which was a terminal for the Wells Fargo stage lines. Fenner, California, in turn, was named after James Fenner, the Governor of Rhode Island. As to how a stage stop in the Mojave Desert came to be named after a governor in Rhode Island -- well, the desert is a strange place, and that's about all I can say. In that map, above, you see Goff's Road, which is the road to Goff's Depot, California, home of the Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Association. All these little railroad towns -- they call them the "Alphabet Towns" -- more or less died in 1931, when they were by-passed by Route 66