This example is located on the north side of Highway 72 as you head out of Folsom towards the Johnson Mesa.

The peak in the background towards the right is Buffalo Head Mountain, so named because it resembles the hump on a bison.

In order to coax their wives out west, the husbands often conceded to bringing along a prized possession.  This was sometimes a frivolous and unwieldy item, taking precious space and energy to transport.

When a draft animal died or a wagon had to be abandoned, these vestiges of the civilized life were left in the prairie sun.  The Native Americans surely wondered at these strange items littering the plains, perhaps stopping to poke at the keys of a forlorn piano to release its lonely notes in a place between here and there.

Have things really changed so much?

We were zinging along at fifty miles an hour and a little patch of something on the highway caught my eye.  Oddly, I knew instantly what it was.  He was still there and mighty pissed when we got turned around and came back for a closer look.

I was once up on the volcano when a visitor from the East coast became very excited, exclaiming to her husband, "Look, look, look -- a frog with spikes!  It's a lizard frog!"

Everyone should get the chance to meet a "horny toad" in person.  It's one of nature's little gifts to the world -- complete with a furrowed brow and a perpetual frown.