We saw a toad today!

We've gotten a lot of rain since the beginning of July, so the creatures are taking advantage of the extra moisture and coming out to play. Loren has been working on fixing everyone's vehicles (finishing Michelle's truck, replacing my brakes AGAIN) all weekend at his mom's house and when we were playing "musical cars," he decided to sweep up a little bit of the dust and debris that had accumulated under Michelle's truck. When he did that, a toad (we thought it was a frog at first) hopped out from the grass by the fence. He chased it with a broom to the other side of the carport area where he was working so I wouldn't run over it. When I parked my car, I went around the side to see if I could see the toad.

He* was just sitting out in the open all fat and happy, so I went to go get the boys from inside the house. When we got out there, I couldn't find the toad. I was pretty bummed that the boys didn't get to see him and little Loren went back inside. Justin and I were just hanging around watching Daddy and I decided to look a little harder for the toad since I figured he was hiding in the vines on the other side of the fence. Sure enough, I found him hiding under the vines and showed Justin, who thought he was pretty cool. Then we went and got little Loren back from inside the house. I used a stick to gently nudge the toad to see if I could get him out into the open but he just jumped further back into the vines. I found him again and it was actually a better view of him where we could see his whole body. The boys thought he was pretty neat. I would have tried to catch him but he was already scared, and I didn't have anything to put him in. Then I decided it was time to leave him alone, so we all went back inside. The ONE day where I didn't have my camera with me, we find something cool. Oh well, such is life.

I figured since there probably aren't very many amphibians in New Mexico, I could probably find him on a list of NM frogs/toads somewhere on the internet. Sure enough, there was an almost identical picture of the toad on Wikipedia. I'm fairly certain our little friend is called Bufo speciosus or Texas Toad**. Loren (hubby) said he must be a little lost to be in New Mexico instead of Texas, but I found that the species does not limit it's range to within the Texas border *wink*. Little Loren decided to name our little friend Megatron (after the Transformer, of course) even though we didn't keep him.

*I have no idea if the toad was a boy or girl. I just figured using masculine forms would be easier.

**It is quite possible that "Megatron" could also have been a Bufo woodhousii (Woodhouse's Toad) because they appear to have very similar markings. The toad we saw was fairly large (about the size of my fist) and the Woodhouse's Toad is at least an inch larger than the Texas Toad. I guess that will teach me to have my camera with me so that we can take pictures in order to correctly identify our finds. I have a feeling this is going to be an interesting adventure of identifying creatures from here on out.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals"
(so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man.
I find the result humiliating to me.
~Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, 1907