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The last days of toads in the U.P.

Karen Wils photo Catching toads can be a fun experience or a gross one, depending on your viewpoint.

ESCANABA — Often in September, two seasons collide!

The waning summer, with its jungle of green and the heat and humidity, slowly gives into autumn.

September is a mix of flip flops and flannel shirts, beach gear and shotguns.

Nobody knows this like the lowly toad.

One night, the cricket-filled meadow is wet with dew and layered with silvery fog. The next night, the north wind reigns and whispers frost to the lowlands.

The lumpy, bumpy toad burrows into the sand. Toads are summer creatures in Upper Michigan, but as long as there are insects, ants, slugs and worms, toads are about.

Early in the springtime, toads sing their mating songs and lay their strings of eggs in ponds, puddles and marshy places. It’s so exciting to hear the sound of toads and frogs after a long winter!

In a couple of weeks the eggs hatch into black little tadpoles. In a month or two they have changed into toadlets and are ready to hop into the woodlands and gardens to feast on bugs.

Toads are active from May until October in our area. As summer winds down, so do these cold-blooded critters. When the bugs are gone and the ground threatens to freeze, the toad buries himself deep in the mud or sand until spring.

So, as our maples are turning red and the pumpkins are almost all orange, the toad is counting down his days until the big sleep.

Years ago, before our new sidewalk, we had a makeshift wooden step at our back door. My son was a toddler then, and he loved to play in the mud that accumulated beneath that step. One day, much to his excitement and joy, he found a toad under that step. “Big Daddy Toad,” he called it.

Big Daddy Toad lived under there all summer long. I remember stepping outside very carefully at night worried that I might accidentally step on my son’s friend. But toads are a gardener’s friend because they can eat so many harmful insects.

I have read that some toads can live for thirty years in the wild. Toads do not cause warts but they produce a toxin that can irritate the skin and can make dogs drool and spit if they try to eat them.

To be called “a real toad” is not so much of a compliment, but this slow-hopping creature with a face that only its mother could love is a good neighbor indeed.

Savor September with its sunflowers and toads and its football and fires at night. Go wading in the water on one more warm day and make apple cider on crisp cool afternoon.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.

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