harvester ants

Question
i have a baby horny toad, and i was told that it will die without the vital harvester ants... and while i was searching i found that you might be able to sell me some of those? i am sorry i didn't follow your rules but i am just worried about my lizard!

Answer
See my webpage at wichitafallsreptilerescue.webs.com and email me from there. I will need to see pictures first, and know what state you live in.

I would advise that if this is a horned lizard that you captured, to return it exactly to the spot you found it, at the same time of day you found it before. They are home range specific and cannot be relocated with success. Most species are protected, and depending on what you have, you may have violated the law by taking it. I say this because I know well that reptile dealers rarely if ever sell baby horned lizards. If you are in or took it from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, or California, the chances are that you broke the law.

Horned lizards usually waste away and die without harvester ants within a few months, this is true. They also have about a 1-3 month normal life expectancy with beginners anyway, and the fact that you have a baby, I would say that it doesn't stand much chance of surviving more than a month. I have 7 years experience keeping horned lizards, and wrote a 40 page manual on them which is used to teach zoo keepers how to keep them alive. Even zoos have trouble doing that, so really, you are just sentencing it to an early death in your hands because you are not skilled enough to take care of it. I say this as someone who has rescued more than 100 horned lizards from would be pet-keepers in the last 4 years I have been doing reptile rescue.

If you don't already know this much about them, trust me, you don't know enough to keep it alive.