I went to El Centro, CA located in the Yuma Desert to learn about the flat tailed horned lizard. As soon as I arrived in town I knew something was up because the town is small and everywhere you looked there are express water booths and blue barrels lining the highway with Aqua written on the side. I spent the night in a hotel, loaded my camel backpack with ice, and met a BLM official at 6am to look for lizards in the desert. The way in which you look for flat tailed horned lizards is to simply walk across the desert and look at the sand. At around 8am I noticed that I began to drag my feet and told our guide that I felt a little hot-- he took a temperature reading and it was 96 degrees-- I wondered how in the world was I going to make it through the day. He said that often times people look for the lizards whole hearty because of being tired and exhausted due to the heat-- his solution, offer surveyors 100 dollars for finding lizards. In all we walked maybe 2 miles and just so happened to cross over into Mexico for a few yards in the open range (according to GPS). I have respect for anybody that crosses over into the USA by walking through the desert... the heat and deep sand makes the trip difficult. The sand gets really hot in the heat.. we measured the sand temperature at 134 and because it is so deep... your feet basically get toasted.
Me holding a sensitive species (flat tailed horned lizard)
me in the desert with Mexico in the background (approx 1/4 mile)
see if you can spot the lizard
