Eastern American Toad

There is a short list of things needing to be done at the Native Plant Garden.  One of those is to finish spreading the mulch which I stockpiled at the upper end during the summer.  The last time I worked on that, I was busy forking the mulch out of the pile when I discovered a toad in my workspace.  Today I was again forking mulch into buckets when a toad appeared as if spontaneously.  Was this actually the same toad?  No way to know, but I did take some time later to identify it as an Eastern American Toad, Bufo americanus americanus. 

This poor thing has been taking advantage the habitat I inadvertently created for it, and would probably like to spend the winter there, snuggled down in the “warm”, damp mulch.  Perhaps I’ll leave just one little pile of mulch for it.


--Ben

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