By Alisha Brewer
Fall is in the air: cool morning breezes, pumpkin spice everything at the store, apple cider doughnuts on the menu, pumpkin patches and orchards anxiously awaiting our arrival. The countdown to Halloween is on.
Though I’m not exactly sure what Halloween will look like this year, I do know that it will be here in only a few short weeks. My boys have helped me hang skeletons, ghosts and cobwebs. We’ve placed witches’ cauldrons, fat rats and rubber bats all throughout the house. We have even been brave enough to sample Zombie Skittles.
To help get you in the mood for All Hallows Eve, I’d like to tell you a story. However, this is not a tale of myth or legend. This is a wonderfully grotesque, and quite accurate account, of a little creature that lives right outside your door…one that you will view the same nevermore.
Horned lizards, often referred to as horny toads, are fantastically chunky little lizards (not at all toads) that are about the size of a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Their flat, round bodies are a beautiful brown and tan color, which helps them disappear in the desert background. These little tanks are built for defense. From their head to their toes, they are covered in spikes. Their armor acts as a great deterrent should a hungry snake come slithering by. Our horned friends can puff up their bodies when threatened. A spiky balloon is not very easy to swallow.
But what makes horned lizards so spookily spectacular is the fact that they can shoot blood from their eyes! That’s right! When camouflage, spikes and inflated bodies don’t work, their secret weapon is to shoot a 4-foot jet stream of blood directly into their antagonist’s mouth and eyes. This startling and foul-tasting stream of blood is enough to shock and distract any coyote. While the perplexed predator is busy shaking their head trying to rid themselves of what I can only imagine to be a Zombie Skittles like taste, the lizard takes the opportunity to quickly disappear.
If you’re thinking this could be a fun Halloween trick to show the kids, I’ll have to be the bearer of bad news. You’d have better luck getting Dracula to go vegan. Horned lizards are harmless to humans. If you pick one up, it will likely sit calmly in your hand. It may puff up a bit, or even try to roll over and play dead, but that’s about it. The lizards reserve their eye gushing action as a last resort for hungry bobcats and coyotes. Humans very rarely get the pleasure of their expelled bodily fluids. So, it’s best to just let that little lizard lie.
So, this October while many folks will think of ghosts and goblins, Frankenstein and the Wolfman, you can regale your friends with a tale of Tucson’s horned lizard…what a wonderful treat it is to see him and the terror-ific trick that he has up his sleeve. Happy Halloween!
