Toad

California, or Western Toad

Not many people here today have even seen this toad, but before 1964 there was a great abundance of these little guys. Often, after the first rain of the fall, the baby toads would migrate from the river to the inland areas to winter up. They would live in people’s yard or garden. If a board was left laying flat, a gopher or a mole would dig a tunnel under it, then the toad would take over the gopher tunnel. They could always be found in gardens and under woody debris. Every lumber pile had numerous toads under it.

In the fall there was sometimes such mass migrations that the toads getting run over on the rain wetted pavement would make the pavement slick and dangerous. In would smell like fish, and after the sun came back out it would smell like dead fish. The flies and the yellow-jacket wasps would invade the dead toad bodies.

The adult toads would mate in the river. The male grabs the female around her chest under her arms. When she lays her eggs in long strings the male fertilizes them as they come out. She lays up to 17,000 eggs. She sticks them to vegetation along the bank of a stream or a pond. They hatch into tadpoles, and feed in the pond or river until the fall when they form arms and legs. At the first heavy rains they would move inland.

Why is it that nobody wonders what happened to the once abundant toads? Can it be that they disappeared before the local environmental movement started? I wonder how many other species have disappeared without notice, because it was before our time. If I had not seen the once abundance of the toads I would have nothing to go on to know that they were even here.

Just a thought. Does anyone else remember the toads?