The Song of Spadefoot Toads

Another rainstorm on Sunday the first night of August, and the Couch’s spadefoot toads were back in chorus!  There were also a few western green toads in the flooded field.  During an earlier rainstorm back in April, I heard the calls of New Mexico spadefoot toads.  Quite a variety of amphibians for a patch of desert!  (Scaphiophus couchii, Anaxyrus debilis insidior, Spea multiplicata stagnalis)

 

The glorious and scary lifecycle of spadefoot toads

My friend Tristen rescued spadefoot toad tadpoles from a flooded road, which was not going to stay flooded for very long. She nurtured the tadpoles in a bucket and a pool, feeding them dried shrimp, baby frog formula pellets, and algae-based wafers. In two weeks, they grew into fully formed spadefoot toads. (These amphibians are supremely adapted to desert life and emerge from their burrows after summer monsoons to breed in ephemeral pools. The tadpoles metamorphose on hyperdrive.)

As the young spadefoots, one by one, hopped out of their pool and back into the wild, they inevitably suffered some casualties to birds!

Tortoise combat

 

In researching desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) for a new comics project, I learned that the males engage in fearsome combat for territory and access to females.  Each tortoise digs at his opponent with the gular horn at the front of his plastron (lower shell) to flip the other onto his back!   For defense, they stand tall on their four legs and become hard to flip.  The tortoises can eventually right themselves, although being overturned must be stressful.  If they knew that they are a threatened species, would they reconsider their dueling traditions?  Inspired by the slow-moving warriors, I crafted this poster.

New comic book--Can Jumping Spiders See the Moon?--for sale on my Etsy site!

 

This science and nature thriller tells stories of jumping spiders using their real-life super powers of vision, intelligence, and long-distance leaping to hunt dangerous prey (and court dangerous mates)!  In crafting this graphic narrative, I consulted a body of scientific literature about the amazing minds of jumping spiders, exhibited especially by their varied and adaptable hunting techniques.  My intricate line art and dynamic narration illuminate the beautiful and merciless natural world.

11" by 8.25"
12 pages
black and white

$4.95 plus $2 shipping 

Buy this comic book!

 

Carlsbad Caverns Launches Podcasting Program with Cover Art by me

Carlsbad Caverns National Park has launched it's Three Sources of Light podcasting series to satisfy your scientific and historic curiosity about New Mexico's cave country! The first episode is out and more will follow. You might even recognize the artist for the cover image. 

I made this picture while on Uncle Sam's payroll, so it is not copyrighted. 

The Mesozine Era, includes work by me

  

THE MESOZINE ERA is NEW and contains a single-page comics story by me called "Fear the Oasis," which is set in Madagascar in the late Cretaceous! I also contributed an illustration of a Spinosaurus. This is the first time that I have been published in the same book as Denis St. John or Bryan Stone, which seems long overdue, given that we all attended The Center for Cartoon Studies at the same time and we all like monsters. Denis edited this volume and evidently recruited some top talent! #dinosaur #ZINE #comicbooks #ComicArt #DinosaurArt

Buy the book HERE.

Mesozine Era cover by © Denis St. John

Jumping spider in the works

I’m working on a comic about jumping spiders!  Here is a panel, which I will letter later.