Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California,

now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the Mojave?

Oh, it sounds like Christmas.

Maybe it is.

Maybe Christmas has come after all.

Those plywood stars with the Christmas lights are up here and there in Joshua Tree.

There's some business down the road from the Oracle, a computer repair store or something.

I don't know what they do over there, but it's the place where the star stays up all year round.

Why go to the trouble and next Christmas time might come again?

Twelve or so months from now?

The Christmas tree lot is there at the Home Improvement Chain Store on the other side of the sewage plant site only open till dusk in the year of our sorrow of 2017.

Oh, they are growing in Yucca Valley. They'd like to anyway. They will eventually.

Time for a sewage treatment plant right up against the boundary with Joshua Tree.

The Pano Peplas are back, beautiful birds, dark and silky feathered birds.

They come here to feast upon that most festive desert plant, the desert mistletoe.

The Pano Peplas spends all day long in that mistletoe this time of year, eating those red berries.

Now those berries might make you high as a kite.

You might see God or something worse or just tasting the things might kill you dead.

It's a toss-up.

But the Faina Pepla evolved to deal with these otherwise toxic berries.

And maybe that's why they're such cheerful birds.

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