A Toad State of Mind

By Martha Siegel

Toads come in many colors and sizes and hang out in a variety of habitats.

There’s something unnerving - horrifying really - about plunging a spade into spring garden soil and realizing you have ever so narrowly avoided chopping a hapless, buried toad in two. Which is the very last thing I would want to happen to one of these endearing, warty creatures that pop up just about anywhere around here. I consider them a most welcome resident of our yard in Albany Township and a sign that there’s a degree of balance to the local ecosystem. 

These benign amphibians come in so many colors and sizes and hang out in such a variety of habitats in our region, I was sure I was looking at several different species of toad. Not so. Among Maine’s frogs, only one is called a “toad.”

This is the American toad, sometimes referred to as the Eastern American toad. And what about those variations in color? As I hike the local trails in the Mahoosuc region, I notice the toads that invariably beat a hasty retreat ahead of my boots range in earthy tones from tan to orange to olive-brown to almost black. These variations are due to factors such as age, elevation, humidity, and temperature. In addition, toads can alter their color in response to some of these factors. Color changes are not immediate like that of a chameleon but can be as rapid as a few hours to a day.

There is nothing quite like spying the snout and eyeballs of a toad taking you in as you bustle about.

“Nothing evokes the feeling of warm, humid late spring in Maine quite like the sonorous, haunting trill of male toads on the lookout for females.”

Toads are mostly active at night, busily capturing a varied diet with their long, sticky tongues, such as flies, worms, caterpillars, slugs, beetles, and spiders. During the day, they seek shelter in dark, moist spaces beneath soil, leaves, wood, or rocks. For several years, I have had at least one toad that prefers to bury itself in the soil of various plant pots in my dooryard. This is accomplished by digging backwards with the hind legs. There is nothing quite like spying the snout and eyeballs of a toad taking you in as you bustle about. 

Of course, toads are on the menu for a variety of predators like skunks, raccoons, snakes, and various birds of prey. I have a distinct childhood memory of a dog who tried to eat a toad and ended up with a mouthful of white foam. This was a result of the toxic secretions emanating from the toad’s glands and warty skin. Some predators are immune to these toxins, and others know how to avoid the secretions. Other less drastic defensive actions include peeing when they are handled and puffing themselves up to look larger than they really are. 

The smaller male couples with the larger female. Soon she will lay a string of eggs.”

One of the things that I most appreciate about toads is their distinctive call during mating season. There is nothing that evokes the feeling of warm, humid late spring in Maine like the sonorous and haunting trill of male toads on the lookout for females. A few years ago, a powerful winter flood event in the Wild River valley severely damaged the gravel road, cutting off all motorized access. That first spring after the flood, it was even difficult to navigate the road on a bike, but we were determined to explore the length of it one mid-June day. With human activity abruptly curtailed, it seemed that the wildness of this valley was free to re-inhabit the byway. Mere yards into the ride we began to hear a chorus of ethereal trilling. As we left the range of one toad, we would enter into that of another until we were enveloped within a most otherworldly stereophonic reverberation. 

When we ventured from the road down to one of our favorite river stops, we began to notice toad couplets near and within the shallow side pools. And just like that, we understood how toads come to be. These couplings, with the larger female on the bottom, result in gelatinous strings of eggs being laid into the water. Within a couple of weeks, the eggs become tadpoles. It takes the tadpoles up to two months to slowly transform into tiny toads. Later in the summer we returned on bikes to encounter the difficult task of NOT running over dozens of tiny, dark colored toadlets who had left the river and begun the journey back to the woods. American toads usually live 1 to 5 years in the wild and take 2 to 3 years to reach sexual maturity.  

Finally, as cold weather returns, toads use their hind legs to bury themselves deep within the soil for a very long rest. Unlike wood frogs, toads cannot survive by freezing solid. Instead, they rely on getting below the frost line and entering a dormant state called brumation. As I write, the sap is flowing in the maple trees, the birds are becoming more vocal, and the edges of the garden are coming into focus. I like to think about our toads buried somewhere under the patches of snow, decaying plant matter, and soil, just waiting to wake up to another season of doing what toads do.      

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