A Woodhouse Toad

Little creatures of the night are often few and far between in the summer in the desert.  This little Woodhouse Toad visited last night, probably looking for crickets (which we have by the hundreds).
The layout is created with Karen  Schulz just-released kit  Rocky Mountain Dreams using her diary/journaling page for the main part of my layout.

The text reads:

  Last night a Southwestern Woodhouse Toad was quietly sitting on the warm stones of our patio.  This porky little fellow did not move until I turned out the lights.  

  Southwestern Woodhouse Toads are  large olive to gray-brown or black toads with scattered dark spots on the back and a light buff colored stripe running down the center of the back. The cranial crests are large, and the parotid glands are long and diverging. (These are the glands that are like salivary glands that excrete a nasty tasting saliva that makes them undesirable to predators who would like to eat them!) The cranial crests contact the parotid glands. Their voice sounds like the nasal wail of a crying baby.

  Their body size  is up to 5 in.   Their stomach color is light, sometimes with black flecks. Rear of legs will have a network of yellow and black lines. In males, the throat sooty, lower jaw yellow.

  This species is distributed across the southwestern states west and south of the Rocky Mountains, including northwestern Arizona, southern Utah, and eastern Nevada along the Virgin and Colorado Rivers.  We are on the Virgin River, here in Mesquite.

  Their diet is insects and their habitat is sandy areas in a variety of places (desert streams, sagebrush, city yards) near slow-moving water.   This one was likely after crickets in our back yard and while I have heard them now and then in the summertime with their short wailful  “ribbit” this is the first one I have seen.