Toads

Our Dear Friend, the Toad:
FAVOURITE ENTRES:
Flies, dragonflies and butterflies; grubs and worms and caterpillars; spiders; beatles, ants and most insects. The toad catches food with the sticky end of its tongue.
A toad's eyes help it to swallow food. The eyes are pulled down through the roof of the mouth to squash the insect before swallowing it. The toad looks like it is blinking or going to sleep.
PET TOADS:
Remember! Toads would rather live outdoors. However, as pets, your toad will also eat fruits and vegetables. As babies, especially boiled lettuce, although they are very vulnerable so an older toad has a better chance at survival.
You can catch grasshoppers in warm weather, or buy crickets at most pet stores.
You can dig up worms, and even keep a worm box in a cool place by throwing in table scraps daily. Then, of course, you have more pets.
Be sure to keep a little dish of water in your terrarium, and some sticks and leaves, and some sand for the toad to burrow in during day-light hours. Toads do not like bright sunshine. An upsidedown dish or margarine container with an opening for it to crawl easily into makes a good toad-home.
If you want to have a toad-friendly backyard - after all, toads eat a lot of insects (so don't use pesticides if you want to encourage them) - here is a wonderful and inexpensive addition. Dig a hole about 3' x 3' x 3' in a corner of your yard, and fill it with sand. You can use a cheap coarse sand. It will give toads an easy-to-dig-into refuge during the day, and a place to hibernate in winter. Plant flowers, perennials, or shrubs around the edges for shade.
The Ear Spot - the TYMPANUM. In the male toad or frog, the ear spot is bigger than its eye. In the female, the eye and the ear spot are about the same size.
The PAROTOID GLAND - a toad has a sac on its neck behind the eye and the ear called a parotoid gland. This gland contains a poison that either tastes very bad so that an animal or bird trying to eat it will spit it out, or will get very sick afterward and not eat another toad, or will get a sore throat right away, or it may even die, especially if it is a small predator.
Toads take short little hops, whereas frogs can leap fairly far, many times their own length.
WARTS on Toads: Toads have warts; they don't give them. People get warts from viruses, not from handling toads. The 'warts' that toads have are not really warts but are just normal thick places on their skin. If you do handle toads, frogs or other amphibians, remember to wash your hands first as substances from your hands, like sunscreen, can damage their delicate, sensitive skin.
Skin: Toads have thick bumpy skin while frogs have smooth skin.
The skin of a frog must be kept moist at all times because they also take in oxygen through it. They mustn't get very far away from water. If the skin of a frog dries out, the pores close up, and it can die because it breathes through its skin as well as its lungs.
The thicker skin of the toad helps them hold water in, and they don't breathe through their skin so they can survive in habitats further away from water and often travel quite far from sources of water, though they do require water for breeding.
EGG to TADPOLE to ADULT: Toads and frogs lay eggs in ponds. A toad's eggs are often laid in strings, and these strings of eggs are stuck to water plants such as cattails. The eggs will hatch into tiny black tadpoles which eat plants in the water, and grow bigger into a toad or frog. Legs start to grow on their body, and their tail gets smaller until finally it disappears altogether.
Toads and frogs call for mates in the spring and you can hear the different songs of each type of this delicate critter if you go out into the marsh in the spring, esp. evening.
Sparkles: A toad's eyes look like jewels. You can see this by going to a pond or wetland on a spring-warm night and quietly shining a flashlight across the water. You will see the reflection of their eyes as hundreds of sparkles across the pond.
Ramps for Toads: In Shaldon, Devon County, England, ramps were built to protect the toads, crossing by the hundreds to their regular mating pond, from being squashed by vehicles. The common toad is one of England's largest amphibians, and they value it.
AMPHIBIANS: Amphibians were the very first creatures to have a voice. Amphibian means that they have a 'double life'. An amphibian is a cold-blooded creature such as a toad, frog or salamander that hatches from an egg and becomes a larva or tadpole first, while still in the water. As a larva/tadpole, it has gills so that it can breathe in the water. Later, it changes from a tadpole into a toad or frog that now will have lungs and will breathe air.

Help frogs and toads by being a part of the Frog Watch every spring.
Get your kids, parents, friends, and grand-parents involved, too.
http://eqb-dqe.cciw.ca/emanops/frogwatch/ontario/intro.html Frogwatch Ontario
or
http://www.im.nbs.gov/amphibs.html North American Monitoring Program

Books for Children:
Tom E. Toad by Karen I. Smith fieldofcedars@hotmail.com
for exerpts view at www.smmirror.ca/tometoad.html
Loads of Toads Activity Book by Karen I. Smith with every activity having a related teaching
basis about toads, and nature in general. email me at fieldofcedars@hotmail.com
The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
Old Mr. Toad by Thornton W. Burgess
Grandfather