In this year leading up to Arizona's centennial, Feb. 14, 2012, we'll reprint a story or excerpts each day from the Arizona Daily Star or Tucson Citizen archives.
June 17, 1912
PHOENIX - Have you joined the Amalgamated Order of Horned Toad Chasers?
Hundreds, even thousands, of Phoenix people are eligible to membership in this society. If you have ever paused on your evening stroll to stir up one of the inoffensive horned toads along the way, or to pick him up in your hands, you will be welcomed into the fraternity.
Horned toads are here by the bushel. There are scads, oodles and regiments of inoffensive little lizards on the streets and vacant lots of Phoenix. If they were not here the red ants would take the town.
Of course, the horned toads were here before human beings were here, but they seem to be unusually plentiful this year. The ant crop was good last season and the tribe multiplied rapidly.
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More horned toads make more horned toad chasers. There are people who just can't resist the temptation to stop and play with them.
Some like to tickle the toads with straws while others are never happy without one of the reptilian ant-eaters in his hands.
No horned toad ever bit anyone and even if they did the bite wouldn't be very serious. Their harmlessness subjects them to a great deal of annoyance. On the other hand, it is their protection, for if they were poisonous they would be killed off.
There are some horned toads who can tell a horned toad chaser a mile off, and hide, if they can. If they can't get away, they resignedly submit to stroking and even to slight torture. Some of them even seem to like being caught by human beings and to court capture. They're used to it by this time.
Nothing will make a horned toad any madder than to be thrown into a ditch. They can swim, but they don't like to go in the water without bathing suits.
Being mailed is something else that no horned toad really likes. The number that are mailed against their will at the Phoenix post office is truly surprising.
Every day the mail clerks liberate a few horned toads that have been shut up in boxes for transportation to distant climes.
There is a federal law against the handling of live creatures in the mails, and if anyone wants to ship a horned toad he had better go to the express company.
- Arizona Daily Star
The Sundt Cos., O'Rielly Chevrolet, Research Corp. for Science Advancement, Sam Levitz Furniture, the University of Arizona, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., Rosemont Copper, Tucson Realty & Trust. Co., Jack Furrier Tire & Auto Care, Walgreens and Carondelet Health Network are sponsors of the Star's Arizona Centennial project.