Wild South West

Five 45-minute episodes are contained on one DVD disc, presented in widescreen at 1.78:1. English subtitles are NOT provided but closed captioning (CC) is. (CC is inferior because of HDMI barriers and format intrusiveness.) The wildlife photography crew deserves kudos for their daylight work including many nice panoramic vistas. The narrator (also one of the series editors) is Jay Tanner-McDonald who sports good diction but with a ‘wild west’ twang and an “Aw shucks” tone and delivery reminiscent of Andy Devine. Ignoring his braggadocio and sound-track shenanigans, content is reasonable. Some might find program quirks captivating. I found them irritating.Episode 1 covers Bracken Cave (bats) near San Antonio, best not watched during mealtimes. I won’t go into details here but have one question: After all twenty million bats are returned to Mexico for the winter, why not just widen the entrance a bit, then go in with skip loaders. Remove the 60-foot-deep accumulations of guano to dump trucks, including all creepy-crawlies, and use the stuff to fertilize a vast chunk of Texas farmland. Then follow-up with flame-throwers. Or just skip the removal part.Episode 2 is on 30,000-acre Mill Iron Cattle Ranch in the north Texas panhandle next to Oklahoma; with smallish critters like rodents, prairie dogs (and their horse-leg-breaking holes), rattle snakes, coachwhip snakes, wild turkeys, black widows, tarantulas, local birds of prey; then lots and lots of cows; and cowboys (often silhouetted against a rising sun) riding horses, roping cattle and branding calves all over the place. This is National Geographic?Episode 3 covers Toledo Bend Reservoir and the Sabrine River wetlands and bayous on the Texas/Louisiana border: swamp birds, alligators, alligator snapping turtles, gars, leaf-cutter ants and carnivorous plants galore; and a look at the river’s geography.Episode 4 (the only non-Texas episode) shows the annual July Badwater Ultramarathon where participants leave the starting point in Death Valley California at 280 feet below sea level (lowest point in the lower 48), thence jog or otherwise move along the 135-mile-long designated route to an ending point at the base of Mount Whitney (highest point in the lower 48) at somewhere above 4000 feet (they never say). Along the way are insects, rattlers, turtles, rabbits, coyotes and roadrunners, turkey vultures and road kill, Lake Owen (a pumped-out-now-in desert lake bed with brine flies), non-native habitat- destructive burros, and desert bighorn sheep. No mention of mountain lions (or bobcats); but (as a former resident) they are near higher elevation water sources, dining on rabbits, deer and (to much concern) endangered desert bighorn.Episode 5 goes to Big Bend National Park in extreme southwestern Texas bordering Mexico. (I wonder how a border wall will fare here.) Besides nice vistas, we see several of the endangered but now recovering black bear population; glimpses of giant (up to five feet, 100 pound) catfish in the Rio Grande; several species of small rodents, toads, and flycatchers; painted ladies’ life cycle; several types of hummingbirds; coyotes and roadrunners; and a javelina herd rummaging a campground. The most interesting thing learned from this series: Javelina are NOT members of the pig family.