Although well adapted to the desert, mature agaves can still succumb to the heat and lack of moisture that is prevalent at times in the Sonoran Desert. It's always sad to lose one given their size and the fact that they may have already survived for decades but have not yet bloomed. This is one I walked past daily, watching it quickly wither in the summer heat. It's living symmetry was still apparent until the very end, a ghost of beauty that refused to die.