Sure, you got your lion, tigers, and bears and a million other cool species of animals, but, for my money, none of them top the phrynosoma cornutum, or horny toad.
I’ve heard them called horned frogs and horned lizards, but my friends and I always called them horny toads while growing up in Fort Worth.
Imagine if a flirtatious frog got tipsy and hooked up with a lizard one night and gave birth to a horn covered reptile that could open its mouth really wide and swell up its belly and spit blood in a pinch.
What’s cooler than that?
The spiked little critters were a common sight until the 1970s. Apparently, size doesn’t matter in the ant world. Horny toads fed on red ants, but those big ants were doomed by the much smaller and fiercer fire ants.
Throw urban development and pesticides into the mix, and the horny toad faded away.
So it’s great to read in today’s Weatherford Democrat about an upcoming meeting in Weatherford on reintroducing the horny toad. If you want to join in, it’s at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 at Herverger Hill Community Center, 701 Narrow St. in Weatherford.
They will have to reintroduce the red ant.
Then they’ll have to reintroduce pesticides.
This story is ribbiting.
I remember catching and releasing 55 horny toads in one day in the field across the street from my house on Dallas Ave. in Meadowbrook back in about 1960.
Did you pull them out of a water injection well, and then Tommy Lee Jones hit you with a shovel in the head and made off with the horny toads?