Who goes there?
              by G. Rodin

 

Syd and I do a lot of hiking, and have seen so many tracks on the trail and always wondered "what made that kind of a track"? While in the bookstore recently, I came across the neatest, SMALL (4 ½" X 5 ¾" -perfect for the hikers backpack) book. It is "Animal Tracks of the Southwest", by Chris Stall. ($5.95)

In the introduction, "How to Use this Book: he says when you find a track, "measure it by using the ruler printed on the back cover of this book…Flip quickly through…until you find tracks that are about the size from smallest to largest". He also gives you TRACKING TIPS, one of which he tells you "on very firm surfaces, place your cheek on the ground and observe the surface, first through one eye, then the other, looking for unnatural depressions or disturbances".

The footprints captured as the cement of the sidewalk was hardening, just two blocks from our home made me wonder "who went there"?

Armed with our trusty book, (with ruler on cover), Syd and I headed out to our concrete sidewalk, to begin our learning cycle of 'TRACKING", first in our neighborhood.

Our "neighborhood tracks" measure just 2 ½"-3" in length like the coyote tracks on page 67, scanned illustration shown here. Another criteria which matched: "the walking strides of 8 to 16 inches and leaps to 10 feet may help you distinguish coyote tracks from those of domestic dogs with feet of the same size". Our concrete tracks matched the 8 to 16 inches. But our guy must not have needed to leap, as we did not find any of 10 feet distance. The sun hot, the concrete also hot, we both deferred from "putting our check to the ground", as we both agreed that we think it was a coyote and our neighbors were wondering what we were doing down on our knees with our book!

Can you tell the difference in scat (droppings) from a coyote and those from a dog, (which are supposed to be "scooped up" by the owners on their walks)? Yes! Because of the diet of the two differ quite a lot, you can readily tell the coyote scat, because in the winter and spring their scat will be composed mostly of hair from the rodents it has eaten, and will have a curly pointed end like a soft ice cream cone. Dog diets are completely different, and will not have the hair content or the curl. Dog owners; beware-we now know! 

Our very next encounter with tracks came to our front door step this last summer with some unrecognizable "pellets" deposited right on the black rubber door jam. After a friend's visit, when she left the house, I noticed she had "tracked in" something on her shoes. When I looked outside, I found the scat on the doorstep; got broom and dustpan and removed it.

Next morning, curious I checked the front door again, and WOW! There was about 3 times as many as yesterday. They were tubular, over an inch in length and about 3/8 inch in diameter. Please! These droppings were all lined up in a three-column row as though placed there! And, all were on the 2-inch rubber door jam. None on the concrete or dirt! Nowhere else in the yard did we find a single scat. Well, I asked Syd to take a look, and please remove them.

The following day, Saturday, we went on an early hike. On our way home, we stopped at our neighbors and discussed the droppings at our door. It was a unanimous (minus 1-me) decision that it was from TOADS! It must have been from a couple gathering there. 

Immediately upon arriving home, I checked the front door---AND SUPER WOW! If the scat (droppings) from the day before were from a couple of toads, then there must have been a TOAD PARTY on our doorstep last night! And, what a party. There were over 50 droppings! What will happen tonight? Perhaps we will not be able to get out our front door tomorrow morning. Both Syd and I cleaned it up today, and decided to do some research on toads.

In the meantime, after all was removed, I took the broom and some Clorox and scrubbed the door jam to try to sterilize it. What will tonight bring?

Being computer literate, I got on the web and was amazed out of my mind to see the multitude of information about "Toads". However, as I zeroed in on several interesting looking sites, I found that most had to do with Rock Groups, or Toads as Hallucinogens: 

It seems that the greenish-brown toads that produce the hallucinogenic secretion, Bofu-Alvaris, are found in the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern United States, our front yard! They produce the liquid as part of an evolved defense mechanism against predators. Upon moving here, we were told to be sure that our pets "did not lick frogs", and we thought they were pulling our legs!

Since hallucinogenic recipes were not the type of information we were looking for, back we went to my favorite store-the bookstore, and found many, many books on toads, amphibians and reptiles. In the magazine section, we found a magazine "Reptiles", and were amazed to see articles on "Herping in Tibet"; "Calendar of international reptile shows"; advertising by a company named: "Mice on Ice", which advertised CRYOVAC® Vacuum Sealed Individually Packaged."Mice-Cicles™ and Rat-Cicles™ with no freezer burn, 2 to 3 year shelf life, AND no refrigerator odor"! Wow, what we have been missing.

Moving to the Sonoran Desert has certainly expanded our "areas of interest", and knowledge. It seems that the arrival of summer rains in the Southwest triggers the sudden nighttime emergence and clamorous calling of toads. These paradoxical animals are dependent on water, yet are most abundant in the Southwest's driest country-desert, dry grasslands and shrublands, and arid woodlands.

Toads, like the Spadefoots spend the dry parts of the year dormant in self-dug burrows, or those of gophers, squirrels, or kangaroo rats, near where water ponds after summer storms. In extremely dry parts of the Sonoran Desert, spadefood toads may spend two years underground waiting for the vibrations of thunder that signal summer rains, then emerge for only a few days to feed and mate frenziedly.

When the summer thunderstorms rouses these amazing amphibians, they tunnel upward at night from their solitary burrows and congregate by the thousands (in our front yard!). Once on the surface, they head for the nearest water and rehydarate, absorbing water directly through a highly porous skin patch on their bellies. Each dawn, the tiny toads take shelter in the top layer of damp earth, reappearing again after sunset. When the rainy season ends, the Spadefoots dig themselves deep into the soil for the more solitary winter months.

Now that we know their habits, we can certainly see that there must have been quite an interesting TOAD PARTY, right at our front door. While they did no harm, one thing you can count on is that Clorox will definitely encourage them to move to someone else's doorstep for their next evening's get-together!