THE HORNED LIZARD 
Hornykins, Hornykins, open your eye, 
For close to your nose is a blue-bottle fly! 
Toadykins ruffle your spines and your frills 
And scurry away on the rocks to the hills! 
Little squat goblin, all bristling with spikes, 
Flattened-out lizard that nobody likes, 
Stone-colored hermit of sagebrush and sand, 
You're the drollest hobgoblin of no-baby’s land!” 
Charles A. Keeler.* 
LTHOUGH Hornykins looks like 
itis not a toad at all, but alizard 
despite its name. There are 
several species of these living in 
Southwestern United States, 
and in Mexico. These spiny 
little creatures are true deni- 
“/ zens of the deserts, although 
some tive also in pine and cedar belts. 
The horned toad luxuriates in a heat that would 
be fatal to us, and, in fact, it is only active during the 
middle of the day, when the sun, shining through 
cloudless skies, brings the sand up to 60° centigrade. 
It then comes out and runs about as gay and happy 
as any little lizard can be; but before the sun sets, 
it again seeks its retreat, which it makes by ploughing 
a little furrow in the sand with its short nose. Into 
this furrow it settles, its body flattened out, and then, 
with the spiny edges along each side of its body, it 
*From “Elfin Songs of Sunland,” by permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 
278 
a toad made into a pincushion, . 
b 
