A Prickly Pair

If the cacti in Tucson, Arizona, could cheer, you'd hear "Yay for Patsy and Joe Frannea!" all over town. The couple brave nasty pricklers, lurking rattlesnakes and blazing desert heat to save the pointy plants from being bulldozed by developers.

The Franneas belong to Tucson Cactus Rescue, a group that sprang up in 1999 when concerned citizens realized that amid Tucson's housing boom, thousands of the native succulents—from the tiny two-inch pincushion to the basketball-sized, orange-blossomed barrel cactus—were being destroyed to make room for new homes.

"The desert is special to us," says Joe, a Tucson native himself. "These plants have survived harsh conditions for years, some for hundreds of years." If they needed human help to continue surviving, then he and Patsy were ready to provide it.

Tucson Cactus Rescue works with developers, who inform them where and when land will be dug up. Joe, the rescue crew coordinator, gives volunteers directions to the site and tells them which hand tools to bring to safely uproot the plants.

Patsy handles the paperwork: getting permits and tagging the cacti by size. Then the group sells the plants to the volunteers for anything from 50 cents to $5. When rescue day is over, the Franneas load their trailer with any leftover cacti, which they keep in their backyard until they hold a public sale. The group has rescued more than 28,000 cacti since its start.

Patsy says there are plenty of benefits to what they do. By giving the plants homes, people are helping maintain the gene pool of the desert ecosystem. Resettling the cacti is an environmentally sound choice, since it encourages people to landscape their property with plants that need little water. It helps save the wildlife that depend on the cacti.

Plus, spending a day in the desert seeing how many different varieties of cacti you can find—"it's like an Easter egg hunt," Patsy says. Just plain feel-good fun.