Critters abound in my backyard.

Natural camouflage, its really quite amazing.  Now I know why I haven't seen one of these
guys until last night, when we took CeCe for a walk.  This little lizard was basking in the middle
of the path.  The wierdest part about it, was that I spent a few hours on the Internet yesterday at
work, reading about horned lizards, and wondering where I could find one.   Then, as I was walking
with Linda and CeCe, I said, "you know Linda, we should be able to find horned lizards around
here..."  Five minutes later, we walked up on one!   Pretty cool since I was thinking about
them and how I always wanted to see one, and then there one was....

Amazingly docile and sweet little creature.  It didn't run, bite or squirm one bit.  And as far as lizards go, I would 
say horned lizards certainly fall into the cute catagory.





You can really see how tiny this one is.  I think it was a juvenile, probably only half the size of an adult.








So there you have it, my first Northern Desert Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos platyrhinos)


Also last night, I ran into this crawling on the side of our house.  Quite simply, the largest black widow spider 
I have ever seen, pretty much a maximum sized female...I found it just after dark last night.  I herded it into a
tupperware and kept it over night, so I could photograph it in the sun light.  Linda was not happy that I brought
it in, but I couldn't help it. 


The tell tale hourglass....


Size refernce...


And just to round off the post, a few nice shots of another Lizard from the front yard.  I still have not figured out
if these are Western Fence Lizards or Northern Sagebrush Lizards or if I am seeing both species around here.
They look so much alike it is difficult to tell...