A couple of days ago, my wife and I were getting ready to roam the Sagebrush Desert. While she was saddling her horse, I went to check on one of my favorite local ant nests.
This one was a beautiful Formica obscuripes nest. Their nest had a great dome of thatch about 18 inches in diameter. They made the dome from innumerable dried twigs, leaves and sticks. This nest has thousands of ants, and looking at it always makes me think of cities and towns.
Then I saw some movement near the nest. As I stared at the spot, and eventually saw the big, spiky lizard that had been right there the whole time. It was a Greater Short-horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi).
It’s pretty common for us to see these lizards. This one was the first of five Horned Lizards we saw on this particular day. But seeing each one of them was a treat. The feeling was how it must feel to see a Fairy, or a Leprechaun – “How can this be?! Look at that!”.
Horned Lizards eat mainly ants. This particular one was sitting outside of the Formica obscuripes city-nest, probably gulping down unsuspecting ant-citizens, when I happened along and disturbed it.
I also found a pair of Horned Lizard droppings near the nest. Horned Lizard droppings always seem impossibly large when compared to the lizard. I suspect that’s because ants have indigestible chitin exoskeletons. The Horned Lizard just passes the exoskeletons right on through. Think of it as dietary fiber.
One of the droppings had a chalky white blob on one end. That’s uric acid. Reptiles and birds don’t create bulky, water-wasting urine to get of their nitrogenous waste, the way we do. Rather, they make uric acid crystals.
Looking more closely at one of the droppings, I could see the head of one of the Lizard’s previous meals looking back at me. I think the head may be from a different species of ant, probably Pogonomyrmex occidentalis, the Western Harvester Ant.
What must it be like for the ants, to have these huge, impervious lizard-dragons preying on them?
Made me think of the story of Beowulf, with Grendel raiding Hrothgar’s hall.
