Rose Marie Short, age 10, of Salt Lake City, Utah, for her question:

Is chavarral a bird or a Plant?

The crow is a bird and the crocus is a plant. The cow is a four footed mammal and the cowslip is a wild flower. The anemone is a garden flower and the sea anemone is an animal. We have many words that seem to confuse the animals with the plants. So let's not be astonished to learn that the word chaparral may refer either to plant life or animal life.

The word chaparral was introduced into our language around 1846. At that time, the United States was involved in.a war with Mexico. Even during wars, the ordinary soldiers on both sides tend to swap a few words. The Mexican soldiers, naturally, spoke Spanish so no doubt both sides learned a few new words from each other. In any case, the Americans learned the Spanish word for the live oak tree. The new word was chaparro and there were plenty of live oaks growing around the southwestern battle¬field. However, for some reason the Spanish word was changed to chaparral.

What's more, chaparral was such a nice sounding word that it seemed a pity to waste it on a tree that most people hardly ever see. So the new word was used to name the type of plant life that grows on many of our deserts and prairies. This chaparral plant growth includes short, stubby bushes and prickly shrubs. Along washes and in moist canyons you will also find a few evergreen live oaks among the chaparral plant growth.

Cowboys who ride the wide ranges of the prairies must cope with this scratchy chaparral. Sometimes it reaches higher than three feet. So they wear handsome leather over garments to protect their pants and their legs. These cowboy garments are called chaparreras or just plain chaps, pronounced "shapst'. Our word has come a long way from its original Spanish oak tree. But it has one more sprightly step to take.

Visiting tourists often think that our deserts and prairies are lonely, deserted places where plants are scarce and animals even scarcer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At the right time of year, those dusty looking cactuses blossom with rainbow colors and countless sleeping seeds burst forth with new plant life. And at all times the arid regions are populated with a vast assortment of unnoticed animals. There are lizards and snakes, frogs and toads, foxes and coyotes and many types of ratty rodents. A tiny elf owl makes his home inside a tall prickly cactus. Many other birds feed on the swarms of desert insects.

In this teeming chaparral population, the most famous character happens to be a very bold and sassy bird. He is there, always there to greet old friends and impress visiting tourists. By nature he is a born clown and very proud of his prowess as a sprinter. When he spots a car coming, he pops out of the bushes and starts to run along beside it, trying to prove that he is as fast, if not faster. Visitors call him the road runner. The American Indians laugh at him and often call him the crazy chick. Ranchers and cowboys often call him the chaparral cock.

This all goes to show what can happen to a word in a little more than a century  ¬even a word that was adopted from a foreign language. The story began with chaparro, the Spanish word for the evergreen oak. It was changed to chaparral and awarded to low, prickly plant growth of the prairies. It was changed to chaps to name the leather garments cowboys wear to protect themselves from these prickly plants. And finally the word chaparral was awarded to a very sassy bird who lives a full life among the chaparral plants.