Horned Toads by the Dozen

This lonely piece of new gear has been sitting next my computer since April, waiting to be fired up. Finally happened today. Oh, yes -- it's a slide scanner, given me by my mother. Purpose: bringing color slides out of my past to life again on the computer. You'll see why in a moment.

Yep, that's my little horned toad I've seen out front. As I mentioned a while back, this is the first of these critters I've seen at my house in about 20 years! By the way, this is a really wee guy, about an inch across -- note how he's trying to hide behind that leaf of grass. If it weren't for that fringe-y outline, he'd disappear right among all that gravel. Because they blend into the background, horned toads will sit still rather than hide; thus it can be easy to pick them up.

Just for purposes of comparison, here's a much bigger lizard -- about 3-1/2 inches from nose to end of body. This picture by was taken my late husband shortly after we arrived in Arizona, as was the sequence below. All were Ektachrome color slides.

One April day in 1982 we saw a rather fat horned toad, picked it up and brought it into the house to take its portrait. As soon as I put it on the table, the lady (for it was certainly a she) began to give birth! Luckily, my LH had the camera ready.

Like most reptiles, the horned toad does deliver a clutch of eggs; unlike most, the babies are quite ready to emerge. In essence, live birth.

Here's a close-in view of that egg, which at this point is simply a membrane enclosing the hatchling. You can see his legs and tail folded up against his body.

Here, the hatchling has stretched out and the membrane is starting to dry up.

While he finishes drying, his color pattern is developing out.

Already he's an alert little fellow!

And here are two of the 12 little guys that hatched that day. Slightly bigger than a thumbnail. We entered the slides into the photo competition at the Yavapai County Fair that year and the LH took a blue ribbon. Well deserved, too.