VIEW from behind the plow

As a change of pace from our columns on issues that preoccupy the country – President Trump, impeachment, AOC, Jeffrey Epstein, racism, national debt, etc., – we opt to talk about something dear to our heart – toads. We’ve had a deluge of toads at our house this summer. They’re apparently the result of the unusually wet spring and an extended breeding season.

We have been a fan of toads since we were a little kid and would catch tadpoles in the buffalo wallows in our pasture after each rain and put them in a jar in the house so that we could watch them develop, first growing legs and then absorbing their tails into their bodies as they turned into toadlets. Then we’d turn them loose in the pasture.

But back to our toads this year. They’re so plentiful we have to be careful walking across the yard not to step on them.

Our son, Mike, wonders if the swarm of toads might be why we haven’t noticed swarms of flies, mosquitoes and even ticks this summer.

We’ve only found one tick crawling on us this entire summer, which is unusual.

We’ve also noticed the little toads have round bellies so they must be finding plenty of bugs to eat.

We think it is interesting that the little guys have such an instinctive survival mechanism.

They usually hop out of our way long before we get close to them.

That same self-preservation instinct is true of flies. Have you ever noticed how they disappear when you pick up a swatter, or fly away the minute you look at them, especially if you’re armed with a swatter?

Flies have compound eyes, so we were told in grade school science class, comprised of thousands of individual lenses.

They can see better than we can.

I’m thinking they can’t outwit our little toads, though, and I’m glad. I dislike flies almost as much as I like toads. We’ve been surprised the baby toads have hung around as long as they have. Toads usually disappear as soon as it gets hot and dry.

Maybe the bug hunting is so good they are reluctant to give it up.

A web site says toads reach maturity at two to three years of age so maybe this year’s crop will provide us a new bumper crop of new babies a few years from now. It is reported they can live 30 years or longer.

You have probably heard the old saying that handling toads will give you warts. I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve handled lots of toads without any ill effect that I’m aware of. I know that toads will make a dog sick if the dog gets them in its mouth.

I had a birddog a few years ago that never learned to leave them alone. He looked like he might have rabies with foam dripping from his mouth when he picked up a toad. That should tell anyone not to kiss a toad – although we remember the fable about the Frog Prince who was a frog that turned into a prince if the princess kissed it. She did – in the story. But then frogs are a different amphibian. That reminds me of our little grade school musical of “The Frog Prince” and classmate Grady Lynn Allen getting to play the lead role of the frog/prince. (Still kinda hurt by that. Grady did have a gravelly, frog-like kind of voice, though.)

Toads have warty glands that produce a poisonous milky fluid that provides them protection from many predators.

However, snakes don’t seem to be bothered by it. We found a little horned snake (maybe a hog-nose snake) eating a toad twice its size while tilling our garden a few years ago. We weren’t confident enough of our ability to identify a poisonous snake to try to get the toad out of the snake’s mouth.

The University of Michigan has a web site on toads. It says the sexes of toads can be told in two ways. Males have dark colored throats of black or brown while females have white throats and are lighter overall. I’d never noticed.

It also says female American toads are larger than male American toads.

American toads are between 50 and 100 mm in length but are usually around 75 mm, Michigan U. says.

I think Oklahoma toads are bigger than Michigan toads. Our fuzzy math says a 100 mm toad would be 3.94 inches long.

That’s about all I know about toads, except that when it begins raining after a long, dry spell and the toads start croaking, it’s music to my ears.

Whoops – we spoke too soon: The toads disappeared on Tuesday – maybe burrowed into the ground to escape the “wicked” (that’s how a relative in New Hampshire, Phebe Galpin, describes it, anyway) Oklahoma summer heat.