When was the last time you saw a Horny Toad?

We used to find them all the time, when we were kids, at the family ranch near Brownwood. When my cousins had to move to Wisconsin in the early 70s, they told my grandfather they missed the horn toads. He mailed them one. It arrived alive, but didn't last long. I don't think they had red aunts in Wisconsin.

Back in the mid-80s I was dating a high school science teacher. We went out there and found one. He talked about bringing it back to put in his classroom, but decided to turn it loose. When he got back, he looked them up. At that time they were on the endangered species list. It was illegal to keep one unless you were a licensed zoo, or a teacher with special permission to keep it in a classroom. I haven't seen one out there since then. I have noticed, however, that the red ant population seems to have improved a lot in the last few years. We are seeing many more of them and fewer fire ants.

It's my understanding that one of the things that devastated the red ant population, were all the poisons we put out for the fire ants. Perhaps all of us who miss the horny toads should be more careful about what we're using on our lawns.
 
It's been about 9 years since I've seen one. I was helping my husband's (then boyfriend's) family build a backyard fence and one got stuck in a post hole. They're easy to catch when they have no where to go.
 
I think it was back in 1980 when TCU came to town
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I was just talking about this same thing with my dad. Used to see them damn near everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley during the early 80's. It's a damn shame what happened to them.
 
I grew up out in the country near Uvalde in 80-94. They were all over.

I've seen one since 1994. That was in El Paso in 2002, at Painted Dunes Golf Course.
 
It is a lizard.

When I moved to Austin in 1980, I used to see them in the fields at 620 and 183.

The last time I saw one was on a San Antonio golf course...The Dominion, I believe, in 1988.

A couple of TCU grads I know were discussing this very thing with me before the game last fall.

In Texas, both the Texas and Mountain Short-horned lizards are state listed as Protected: which means it is illegal for anyone to take, possess, transport or sell them without a special permit.

And their defense sucks.
 
I used to see them all of the time growing up in the late 70s-early 80s. I haven't seen one in at least 25 years.
 
If you do find one, don't sneak into the bathroom and throw it over the shower door while your mom is in there. It sounds like a good idea, but it's really not.
 
The fire ants don"t kill the horned toads, they are just out competing the red ants because they work all day and all night. The red ants get killed at night by phorids which lay eggs in the red ants. Texas has reluctantly started a program to introduce fire ant predating phorids (little moths which don't naturally live here. Well, they do, but not the ones that can control fire ants). If you really care, you can buy a horned toad TX license plate to donate to their preservation fund. The East TX horned toad put in the cornerstone of a church was named RIP. The legend was well more than 30 years when I heard it. Most people think that he was "replaced" upon removal.

They don't spit blood from their eyes.
 
The horny toad was in the cornerstone of the old court house in Eastland County and was in there for 31 years. They named him Ol' Rip (after Rip Van Winkle) after they found him still alive when the cornerstone was removed for demolition.
 
They are alive and well in the Mexican state of Tamalauipas. I saw one just this morning when we were taking our group picture before leaving the church camp outside Reynosa.

As kids, we used to catch them in the DFW suburbs. We'd catch one and keep him for a couple of hours, then let him go and watch him scamper away. I love those horny toads.
 
I see them from time to time at my parent's house in Wimberley.


And yes fire ants are down in Houston, or atleast in my house in Katy. Might have something to do with only raining 2 days in 3 months. Water bill is a tad high, but I haven't seen any mosquitos...and I'll take that.
 
We had quite a few Horny Toads out on our hunting lease in Fisher County, northwest of Abilene a few years back. No shortage of harvester ants in that area as well. I grew up in Henryetta, OK in the 70s and we had a ton of Horny Toads around but none are present now. There are fire ants in SE Oklahoma but none in the area around Henryetta or Tulsa.

The decline in quail and horny toads are often attributed to fire ants but Eastern Oklahoma used to have an abundance of both bobwhite quail and horny toads and no fire ants have ever been in the area. I'm under the opinion that either pesticides or some long-term pattern of population change of prairie species (some population crash that happens every hundred years versus 10-20 years) could be the cause for both species disappearance. Jack rabbits are another species which also were far more plentiful in my youth.
 
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