A Dress in Yellow and Gold

A Dress of Yellow and Gold

One day it was late summer. The leaves on the trees were green, oily and shiny in the bright sunshine. The sun at noon was warm and the breeze was redolent of summer, soft and without urgency. Then the frost came in the night and touched the leaves with cold fingers and the next day summer was gone and autumn had moved in.

What a delightful wardrobe our new occupant of the guest house is wearing. Yellow and gold and shades of brown and here and there splashes of red! Not the gay, giddy colors of spring, or the cool, green shades of summer, but warmer and richer hues more suitable for a gracious and polished lady with wonderful manners, who sips tea in the afternoon and goes to stately dances at night wearing stars in her hair!

There is magic on the mountainside when that adroit seamstress, Mother Nature, takes out her sewing basket and fashions clothes for the new season. How deftly and quickly she works! How stunning the effects she achieves! If you are living in the valleys or lower elevations, your first inkling of the season's change is when aspen patches on the mountain turn to yellow and gold, as if the mountain had suddenly grown tired of a solid green coat and had decided to pep things up a bit with a gay posy in its lapel. The breeze that comes from the mountain is cooler and the flowers on the road to the mountain, a few days before bright, living things, have turned to dry straw and nod desconsolately as you go by. When you enter the aspen copse you enter a yellow golden world, bright in the sun. The leaves, feeling the pull of the wind, fall to the ground and become dry and crisp underfoot. The leaves talk to the wind until the snow comes and then eternal silence comes upon them and eventually they return to the earth from which they came. But before that, they form a voluminous train for Autumn's majestic gown. After the aspen have given their leaves, they hold up white, ghostly fingers straining the sunlight in eerie patches upon the road. At the lower elevations the cottonwoods and the sycamores heed the summons of the season and give their leaves to Autumn's dress of yellow and gold. Many trees and many bushes contribute to our lady's collection of colors, which range from brightest yellow to burnished gold and brownish red. Colors fit for the ruler of an empire! What empress holds sway over a richer domain!

A DRESS OF YELLOW AND GOLD

The picnic bench in the forest area is covered with the leaves of autumn, obliterating the marks of summer's vacationists. The stillness of the forest is heavy, broken only by the sound of the wind shaking the trees and by the sound of the dry leaves talking to the wind. The rustle of the naked branches of the trees might be idle gossip about the strange folk who invaded the forest in the summer, with laughter and baskets full of good things to eat. A squirrel hops about, puzzled, wondering what happened for there is no longer castoff tidbits of relish in leisure moments. His brown coat is just another spot of autumn color.-R. C.

Despite his ferocious looks, the Horned Toad is a pleasant fellow and makes a wonderful pet. Seven species are found in Arizona.

ARTICLE AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY LORUS J. AND MARGERY J. MILNE

For years the state flower of Arizona has been the beautiful white blossom of the Saguaro Cactus. What could be more fitting for the “state lizard” than that cactus of the animal kingdom—the horned toad? Arizona has more kinds of horned toads than any other state in the Union, and no lizard in the world has so endeared itself to children as these spiny, harmless, friendly little creatures. Every visitor should see a few horned toads in action, and know what they mean to Arizona.

Residents of the Southwest are so used to meeting horned toads beside an ant trail that they seldom give them much thought. Most know how helpful these lizards are in controlling insects, but only a few scientists have kept accurate enough records to be able to prove the lizards' economic worth.. The big red Agricultural Ant forms the largest part of the horned toads' diet—and ranchers are delighted to be rid of as many as possible of this pest. The ants make huge mounds and then keep the area around each completely free of vegetation. By reducing the number of ants, horned toads allow plants to grow over more of Arizona—and the extra forage means added cattle and sheep, hence money to support a bigger human population.

Actually horned toads are such grotesque little creatures —short-tailed and flat, that visitors from any part of the world except the Southwest are amazed at their appearance, and delighted with their apparent lack of fear of man. Few wild things permit themselves to be picked up as readily, and submit to fondling the way a horned toad does. Its hand-like feet, dry scales, and black little eyes make it a caricature of an animal. And although each can scamper over the fields or desert with the speed of a mouse, it spends minutes at a time standing perfectly still, scanning the soil for an insect to eat. When it sees a suitable bug, the sharp eyes direct the head straight toward the prey, while the spiny tail twitches from side to side like that of a cat excitedly watching a mouse! Then in the most deliberate way, the little lizard steps over to the insect, flicks out a soft sticky tongue, and Presto! the bug is gone. This is so like the action of a true toad or a frog, that it is not surprising for the names "horned toad" and "horned frog" to be given to this lizard. But the lizard has no tadpole stage; a true frog or toad has no tail to wag! The natural similarity ends with the manner of feeding.

Seven different kinds of horned toads are known to exist in Arizona, and their ranges leave only a very small area in which none of these lizards have been found. Probably an enterprising Hualpai Indian could locate one on his seemingly vacant reservation too. And the northwest, southwest and southeast corners of the state boast three kinds apiece. An eighth species may yet be discovered in southern Arizona, but it is the rarest of all horned toads-known now only from a very small area of Mexico just across the border. Each of the kinds differs in the size, shape and number of the head spines for which the lizards are named. It is fun to recognize them in the field, and immensely satisfying to an Arizonan that even California cannot offer as many horned toads to delight the visitor. California has five kinds. Colorado and New Mexico each four. Texas and Utah three apiece, andno other state more than two. Nor can horned toads be found native in any other part of the world (except for one strange kind in Australia-that home of exceptions). These lizards are uniquely southwestern Americans-even older residents of the country than are the various Indian tribes.

Indian familiarity with the horned toad is shown in many ways. Pictographs throughout the West include crude likenesses of these spiny lizards. One of the larger symbols on "Newspaper Rock" in the Petrified Forest National Monument shows a stylized horned toad, spread-eagled on the sandstone. The artist responsible for the petroglyph figure is unknown, but tradition has carried over into modern Navajo ideology. The most prominent of the bright sand painting figures in the Yeibechai ceremonies are often these ultra-conventional horned toads. The neck almost lacking in the actual animalis extended a little in the pictograph, and reaches almost a fifth of the total body length in the sand paintings. The spiny tail actually shorter than the petroglyphs would indicate disappears altogether in the modernsymbol. Possibly this is to allow the hind legs to be contorted toward the rear where they can stand on a representation of

the rainbow. Many of these details can be seen in full color in ARIZONA HIGHWAYS for July, 1947, in photographs taken by J. H. McGibbeny on the occasion of a Navajo healing ceremony. But different as the Horned Toad Yei (minor god) is from the real animal, the habits described by the medicine man correspond with considerable accuracy. The "Horned Toad Yei takes his place on the hogan of the Red Ant and opens his mouth -which may or may not pro-tect the ants from lightning. Horned toads do open their mouths to pant when the sun beats down on them and they Have reason for delaying the quick scurry back to a shady shelter. They do take places on the mounds of the red ant, and wait for victims to appear!

The panting of the horned toad demonstrates something that was not even guessed at by scientists until the present decade. These lizards are completely intolerant of high tem peratures, although their native haunts include most of the parts of America where summer daytime heat is regularly high. Through desert and semi-arid lands from southern British Columbia to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, from slightly west of the Mississippi to the Pacific, horned toads can thrive. Some even inhabit the bottom of California's Death Valley, below sea level, while others have been recan thrive. Some even inhabit the bottom of California's Death Valley, below sea level, while others have been recorded from a mountain top at 9,000 feet elevation near Tucson. Yet a temperature of 113° Fahrenheit is quickly fatal to them, and anything less than 50° F. is insufficient to keep them active. The answer to this paradox lies in a curious fact: the The best temperature for a horned toad is around 100° F., and for considerable parts of summer days in the regions where these lizards live, they can count on enough sunlight to warm their bodies into this useful range. Below 80° they may seek shelter from the cold although they are quite able to get around at 65° and can stand being chilled to the freezing point even in mid-summer. But though 100° is best for them, they become un comfortably hot at 102° and show it in many ways. Often they use their heads like bulldozer blades and burrow into the soil for several inches to reach layers that are still not heated by the sun. Skillful operation of the legs, and a strange digging motion of the spiny fringes at the body sides combine to get the lizard to safety before the heat can do it harm.

In winter, horned toads hibernate a foot or so below the surface, but when spring warms the earth again, up they pop and begin looking for a mate. Two of the Arizona kinds of horned toads lay eggs the Regal Horned Toad and the so-called Texas Horned Toad. Each mother-to-be is very deliberate in scratching out a burrow into the ground. Usually she begins it in the evening hours, and during the night lays up to thirty eggs in soft creamy pebbled shells, side by side in the earth. Again the body sides and under parts are called into action, and each egg is rolled in sand, arranged next to its neighbor, and covered with earth all without use of feet or even a watchful eye! Finally the burrow is filled level again and all traces of it vanish when the sun dries out the surface soil. In a month the young horned toads hatch and make their way to the surface each a miniature of its parent.

The other kinds of horned toads in Arizona do rather better by their young. Each parent retains her eggs without shells. They remain inside her body until they reach the hatching stage. Then she drops them one at a time at five or six minute intervals each done up neatly in a transparent bag of fluid like egg-white. Another five minutes and the young begin to squirm within their capsules. They burst the head end of the cellophane-like bag and wriggle forth. As soon as the squirming shifts the collapsed sack backward off the hind legs and tail, the lizardlet opens bright black little eyes and scampers forth. It is ready to fend for itself and to rush after tiny insects. For a few days the youngsters stay near their parent, and often climb upon her back like goslings on a mother goose. Since there may be twenty to thirty, finding such a family group provides a wonderful surprise.

As horned toads grow, they shed their outer skins in great patches. Helping a horned toad shed is more fun than peeling sunburned human skin, because the translucent stuff covers the scales and when it comes free all the pattern of the body surface is embossed on it. Of course the lizards get rid of their old skins without such help, and suddenly their colors show far brighter than before. They accomplish the trick partly by burrowing through tangled vegetation or by digging into the soil so that the loose ends and edges catch and tear away great flakes. But on the head, the old skin does not come off so easily, and to help shed it there the lizards have a special mechanism. All the blood from the head must return to the heart by way of the large internal jugular vein in the neck region. Around this vein the horned toad has a strong muscle that can stop the flow. If the heart pumps hard and the muscle contracts, blood goes into the head under high pressure and cannot escape again. It causes any tissues not hemmed in by skull to swell almost to the bursting point. This bulges the softer parts around the ears, eyes, nostrils and lips, so that they protrude in a most spectacular manner. The stretching produced in this way is too much for the brittle old skin. It breaks loose. Now something can snag on those bits of skin and peel them away altogether.

The "swell mechanism" for shedding the skin is not a horned toad invention. Lots of other reptiles do the same thing. But the horned toads make a use of it that is startlingly different from anything else known in the world. If adequately alarmed, this particular lizard can not only pump its head full of blood but keep on pumping. Something has to give - and it is the delicate membranes around the eyes. From one eye suddenly will spurt a stream of blood often straight into the face of the attacker. The force must be considerable, for the jet may reach a distance of six feet at the same level as the horned toad. The quantity of blood lost is not great, but no one has been able to explain this most amazing antic..Actually horned toads have few known enemies. Along the Mexican border the Roadrunner Birds take quite a few, along with their normal quota of snakes and other lizards. Occasionally a hawk catches a horned toad. Sometimes a snake does, but if the horned toad is a truly horned variety (like any of the Arizona kinds except the Mountain and the Ornate Horned Toads), the snake loses its life at the same time the lizard does. The horned toad simply bends down its head, and the sharp points of the spines press through the roof of the snake's throat when the muscles there contract. The spines lock in the snake's skeleton, and there the matter rests. The lizard can neither be swallowed nor cast out again. Both die, and ants clean the two skeletons with great care. Every once in a while on an open range or in the desert, a person comes across the interlocking skeletons of a rattlesnake and a horned toad-marking the place where the viper made the mistake of its life. Horned toads are gentle, harmless and helpful, but they do know how to get along in the world.