When I was a kid, there was one thing with which* every West Texas boy was familiar. No, it wasn't the back end of sheep or nothing like that, so get your head out of that weird world of sexual fantasies, sicko! It was these little critters you could find almost anywhere you looked. We called 'em horny toads, but in Ft. Worth, they seem to think they were Horned Frogs, like anyone ever seen one of them jump. They would puff up and look real mean, and the story was that they spit blood out of their eyes. Heck, if they did, I handled enough of them you would have thought surely I would have observed that once, but nope, never did see any blood come shootin' out of a horny toad's eyes. I eventually grew up and I didn't think about horny toads much after I discovered just plain ol' horny.
That is until a few years ago, and then I began to think how I haven't seen a horny toad in awhile. I began to ask people if they had seen any horny toads, and every once in awhile, someone would mention they spotted one here or there.
I began to investigate. What happened to all of those millions of horny toads? Did a bunch of horny toad hunters kill them for their hides? There was not much hide to get, and I never saw anyone wearing a horny toad coat. No body ate them, as far as I knew. I don't even think coyotes eat horny toads, but they might. Them coyotes eat 'bout anything.
So then I began to wonder just why they had disappeared. Fire ants! I was almost sure it had something to do with fire ants. I asked this guy from A&M. Them Aggies is thought to be pretty dumb, but when it comes to animals and plants, they usually know their stuff. I asks the guy: Where are all them horny toads? Did the fire ants kill 'em? He says, nope, but it did have to do with fire ants. It seems all the poison people put out to get rid of fire ants also kills harvester ants. Now people who don't live in the Southwest probably ain't familiar with harvester ants. When I was a kid, we called 'em red ants. They are a pretty big ant, and they would make have a nest, not a mound, where they cleared out all the grass and it would always be big. They would leave a nasty welp if they stung you, but they didn't swarm like them fire ants do. Anyways, those harvester ants is what the horny toads eat. So no harvester ants, no horny toads. Also, it seems, no armadillos. Damn them fire ants!
So, what brings up all this recollection of horny toads? It seems some guy was up around Amarillo and stopped to take a picture of a windmill. He spotted a horny toad and took a picture of it instead.
attribution: Scott, thanks
*Everytime I try to end a sentence with a dangling participle, I get this ugly vision of my 6th grade English teacher with a scowl on her face. Ughhhhh!
Posted by Tiger at August 1, 2003 11:37 PM