While on my daily walk with the dogs out in the open desert that surrounds our neighborhood one of them, Emma, caught something I hadn’t seen before. Both dogs are zealous hunters and spent pretty much the whole walk prouncing around trying to catch lizards & rabits. Only in the past couple weeks have they begun to catch them. Well, today Emma sprang what appeared to be a large spiny toad. Looking at it closely it appeared to be bleeding from it’s eye. “Oh great,” I thought,” more death & destruction in the wake of my dogs.”
After doing some cursury investigation when I got home I discovered this wikipedia article on the Horned Lizard. It appears it’s not a toad or frog at all but a lizard. What’s more, apparently one of it’s defense mechanisms is to squirt some foul tasting blood out of it’s eye! there is even a picture on the page that looks almost exactly like the pic I took of the one Emma found. Funniest part now is that Emma keeps coughing like she’s trying to get that taste out of her mouth.
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