When roaming Roswell

Southeastern New Mexico practices extremes. The land shifts from treeless plains to soaring mountains. Vaughn is a collection of hotels and cafes barely hanging on among those that have already succumbed to lack of business. But you better gas up, since another 90 miles separates Vaughn and Roswell. South of Roswell, in one of New Mexico’s oil belts, a massive oil facility is the defining feature of a town called Artesia. Roswell can claim a more affable history. 

The town of 50,000 endures from a single contested event in 1947, a crash locals believed a UFO and the U.S. military shrugged off as weather balloon crash. Whether real or imagined, little green men lord over the entire town, and draws visitors who might otherwise not deviate so far from the interstate. Hotels, souvenir shops, coffeehouses, and more. The green-domed Chaves County Courthouse feels in on the theme. The lamplights along Main Street have the heads of little green men. 

At the nexus of the alien activity lies the International UFO Museum and Research Center, housed in a 1930s movie theater. The museum includes an extensive library on alien issues. The museum focuses in-depth on the Roswell incident. 

There’s a historic aspect to the museum that runs astride its silly aspects. A life-size statue of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, a mock flying saucer with its crew, and some alien autopsy displays. 

Other famous UFO incidents get strong exploration. I read the books of Whitley Strieber as a teenager; the novelist firmly believes he encountered visitors. The incident depicted in the movie Fire in the Sky, when a logger disappeared in an alleged UFO incident and his coworkers became suspects in that disappearance, also received amply exhibit space. 

The UFOs are not the only aircraft known the visit Roswell.  Roswell’s airport seems crowded with airliners, far beyond what commercial airlines would route to such a small market. But the Roswell Air Center is home to numerous retired aircraft. Before it was bought in 2022, Elvis Presley's personal plane sat among the decommissioned aircraft for more than four decades. 

This deep into New Mexico, some sort of New Mexican cuisine was essential. Pasta Café might not be the most enticing name, but the Italian bistro thrived on a Friday night, with a nice menu of Italian-New Mexican fusion cuisine. We split green chile chicken lasagna and green chile manicotti. 

Outside the alien theme, Roswell possesses other attractions. The stone buildings of the New Mexico Military Institute strike an imposing tone. 

Chatty owl

Quiet capybara

Hooting owl

Away from the rush of Main Street, the Spring River Zoo sits on high ground above its namesake river, which flows through the larger park covering both its banks. We were the only people there on a Friday afternoon, unsurprising given the temperatures just above freezing. The capybaras moved around a little, but seemed to relish resembling rocks as they lounged in a secluded corner of the exhibit. The world’s largest rodent does well in captivity and didn’t seem fazed by the occasional cold gusts. 

A little-known zoo always draws a little trepidation. Will it have adequate facilities? Will the animals show the strain of captivity? These are considerations. 

Fortunately, the owls immediately put me at ease. Several bird enclosures held owls chatting in the wind. One great-horned owl sat in the sunbeam, chattering away, while a second owl huddled into a makeshift nest, delivering more typical hoots. Between the owls lied an exhibit with a badger that clawed voraciously at the ground through the holes in its fence. Those claws don’t lie; badgers can burrow deeply faster than most animals. But the badger focused on its task, not us. Both owls responded to human voices, moving around the enclosures, training their eyes on us. 

We garnered even stronger interest from Spring River’s resident elk. The female elk strode up as soon as we arrived. Clearly a social creature, she sniffed and showed interest. With his full majestic rack with shriveled velvet still dangling, the bull elk took more time to come around. Eventually he showed us attention, offering a healthy snort I almost hoped would turn into a bugle. When it didn’t, I was not disappointed – he was kind enough to bare his teeth in a personal display. 

 A number of exhibits sat empty, and the zoo’s black bears were in winter torpor. The lemurs kept to their heated enclosure. A beaver ignored the weather and frolicked in its small pool, building onto its den at times. 

Enough animals moved around on a chilly afternoon to make the zoo a worthwhile stop. A master plan showed expansion plans for the zoo. So those empty closures will not stay unoccupied, and new exhibits will broaden the zoo’s appeal. In the meantime, it’s a good place to stop and listen to the owls. 

Away from the alien imagery, I had to visit Roswell Animal Control. It might sound like an odd choice, but the cat rescue where I volunteer has partnered with RAC for more than three years, resulting in Wild Blue adopting dozens of cats who might have otherwise been euthanized.

The first Roswell cat at Wild Blue was Reevers, a sad-faced kitty who hissed at everyone. But he soon learned to enjoy the brush, and we realized Reeve’s hisses were not a sign of aggression, just how he communicated. He got adopted, survived a few weeks on the lam in Colorado Springs but was found and is enjoying indoor living again. 

I had known any number of cats rescued from this site. I had fostered one for a month – Akroyd, my poor, doomed friend. He was the last addition on a January 2022 Roswell run, and we gave the ill little fellow the best four months of his life. 

Seeing where these cats came into human care was important. Roswell was the original home to some of the sweetest cats from my years of volunteering at Wild Blue. I remember poor sweet Paddington, an orange giant with a cleft palate, who took all the pets he could get. 

At the hotel on Roswell’s north end, I drank my morning coffee outside the hotel, watching the sun rise I when spotted motion. A tabby sprung across the parking lot, ignoring all calls and darting into a storage area, a place where only the cat could squeeze. It showed only fear. As I went to leave the hotel, a second cat darted on the same path. I find myself hoping that they wind up at animal control, TNR’ed or adopted into forever homes. 

The rescue confirmed the construction sites at Roswell’s north end were frequent spots for trapping cats, so if those cats haven’t had their day with Wild Blue, I hope it comes soon.