The desert provides a lot of life if you walk slow and look down a lot. The swell was full of animal life--birds, lizards, and insects, plus some pronghorn antelope, etc. The problem is that the animals living in the desert don't want to be seen. This little guy I almost stepped on but he scurried away, but horny toads don't move quickly as lizards go.
The Great Basin has two subspecies of H.T.s. This one is a Phrynosoma douglassi, a Shorthorned Lizard. This is a less horny of the two toads that live in the Swell.
Luckily they're easy to catch, and my lizard-catching skills, long dormant for 40 years, came back as if I were wearing overalls and stuffing lizards in my top pocket so I could surprise my sister with them at opportune moments.
Whitney named him Charley and wanted to hold him.Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
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1 comment:
You'd think that a biologist was writing this blog :-)
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