Toads

It must be the year of the toads!  They have been all over the place the last week or so.  Everywhere you walk across the lawn, you had to watch where you stepped.  They were on the driveway and roads (some were flat), on the patio, in the garage, and in our outbuildings.  I caught two of them jumping through the door as I entered the house.  And then one morning there was one hopping around in the basement.  Most of them were small toads; not the usual big plump ones we typically see.  I wonder if the wet spring/summer had anything to do with the population explosion.  With the cooler weather this weekend, I haven't been seeing as many.

Sunday morning at daybreak, I had just finished filling the dog dish with food and feeding the cats, when Gus took off across the yard.  There was a raccoon under the bushes near the house and Gus spotted it and treed it.  He stood guard while I retrieved my .22 from the house, and then I dispatched the coon from the tree.  Gus now has another trophy to play with for awhile.

And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
Exodus 8:3