These huge toads are common at night in southern Arizona during the monsoon season, when the humidity is high and thunderstorms occur almost daily. Or at least, that's what the weather is supposed to do. When I visited for about a week at the height of the traditional monsoon season, there were only two days with any precipitation at all, and this was not one of them. Apparently some of the toads were getting desperate and hopping around anyway. The dry dirt on this one's back shows that the recent weather had not been toad-friendly.

Four years later, in the same area, I visited when there was a little more precipitation, and a lot more toads.

Some day I will get photos of Sonoran Desert Toads that aren't sitting in the middle of the road at night, but today was not that day.

These big guys are much harder to photograph than the numerous smaller toads on hot summer nights in this area, because they never want to stop hopping away from you (albeit slowly), no matter how you reposition yourself.

Hey, look — my first ever picture of a Sonoran Desert Toad that's not in the middle of a road!