Apr 6: Toadtopia: toad houses at the furiousCompound
So, I may have recently taken complete leave of my senses. I've posted here on the blog and over on Twitter/Facebook (my tweets are also my FB statuses) about several tree-hugging hippie projects that I have undertaken or intend to undertake, including a rain-water capturing system, a gray water reclamation project and turning my backyard hill into a meadow. The meadow is actually in progress--I've planted wildflowers and clover on the hill, but, annoyingly, nothing is growing so far. The clover apparently needs an inoculent that provides bacteria that it needs to grow or something. I read some reports online where people just threw the clover seed down and the clover did great. I'm going to get some inoculent and some more seed and give it another shot.
Anyway, the project that may signal the parting of me and my senses is my toad house project. Toads provide many benefits to the area they live in. Ok, they provide one main benefit, but it's a good one: they eat bugs. One toad can eat 100 mosquitoes a night and thousands of slugs and other harmful (and I assume, some non-harmful) bugs a year. Obviously, my main motivation is the mosquitoes.
It is very easy to attract toads to your yard. Mainly, they just need a nice cool place to call home and some water.
There are a ton of places online that will sell nice toad houses that look nice and are appropriate for placing amongst your flowers or other places where they'll be seen. My toad houses were going to be out of view under my deck, so they didn't need to be particularly fetching. I have a lot of spare bricks that used to be a border at the front of our house. So, I decided to use those to form several toad houses. Basically all I did was lay two bricks parallel to each other about 2 1/2 inches apart and then more bricks across the gap as a roof. Then, to make it extra homey, I piled dirt over the whole thing.
I made two toad compounds (Toadtopia East and Toadtopia West) on opposite sides of the deck. Each compound has three homes and a water fixture. For Toadtopia West, the water fixture is an old cake pan with some rocks in it. Toadtopia East's fixture is a little bigger. It's a garbage can lid, also with some rocks in it. Both the garbage lid and the cake pan are dug into the ground.
Now, I just needed to sit back and wait for the toads. Waiting sounded terrible, so I imported some toads from the pond at my sister's house. Don't worry, they're only a few minutes away and have the same kind of toads that live near me. We went over there yesterday and my niece Jennifer had caught ten toads for me. They were in a big metal wash basin and it was absolutely X-rated. There were four couples locked in what appeared to be a love-death-grip. They had produced (and were continuing to produce) a ton of toad eggs.
By the time the toad houses were ready, most of the couples had separated. I took a few of the toads one-by-one and put them near the entrances to Toadtopia West. Two of them claimed houses almost immediately while one hopped up on top. I put another one near there, but I didn't see if it went in the third house or just hopped away.
The second picture above shows the whole of Toadtopia West, including the cake pan pond. The third house opens to the right making it hard to see.
By this point, there were two couple still attached. So, I took the other two singles and placed them near Toadtopia East. They both claimed houses right away. Since the couples were in water, I decided to put them in the trash can lid pond with the water and eggs from the wash basin. They both sat there for a minute or two and then climbed out. One couple hopped away under the deck (well the bottom one hopped, the top one just hung on), but I grabbed the other couple and put them right at the entrance to the last house. They eventually climbed in and turned to look out (the third image below is toad-pornographic and may not be safe for work).
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Cool! I remember being eaten alive by mosquitoes when I lived in New York (we don't have any in Cedar, so I wasn't used to remembering to put on bug spray), so I think the idea of having mosquito-eating toads is totally awesome. Good luck with your toad compounds and your meadow!
Out in the west toads make their own homes! At least, I think they do.
Laughed at your descriptions of those frogs 'tickling' each other. You're going to need to add on to Toadtopia when some of those eggs hatch. You could end up with such an overpopulated 'city' that you'll need to import mosquitoes.
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So, I may have recently taken complete leave of my senses. I've posted here on the blog and over on Twitter/Facebook (my tweets are also my FB statuses) about several tree-hugging hippie projects that I have undertaken or intend to undertake, including a rain-water capturing system, a gray water reclamation project and turning my backyard hill into a meadow. The meadow is actually in progress--I've planted wildflowers and clover on the hill, but, annoyingly, nothing is growing so far. The clover apparently needs an inoculent that provides bacteria that it needs to grow or something. I read some reports online where people just threw the clover seed down and the clover did great. I'm going to get some inoculent and some more seed and give it another shot.
Anyway, the project that may signal the parting of me and my senses is my toad house project. Toads provide many benefits to the area they live in. Ok, they provide one main benefit, but it's a good one: they eat bugs. One toad can eat 100 mosquitoes a night and thousands of slugs and other harmful (and I assume, some non-harmful) bugs a year. Obviously, my main motivation is the mosquitoes.
It is very easy to attract toads to your yard. Mainly, they just need a nice cool place to call home and some water.
There are a ton of places online that will sell nice toad houses that look nice and are appropriate for placing amongst your flowers or other places where they'll be seen. My toad houses were going to be out of view under my deck, so they didn't need to be particularly fetching. I have a lot of spare bricks that used to be a border at the front of our house. So, I decided to use those to form several toad houses. Basically all I did was lay two bricks parallel to each other about 2 1/2 inches apart and then more bricks across the gap as a roof. Then, to make it extra homey, I piled dirt over the whole thing.
I made two toad compounds (Toadtopia East and Toadtopia West) on opposite sides of the deck. Each compound has three homes and a water fixture. For Toadtopia West, the water fixture is an old cake pan with some rocks in it. Toadtopia East's fixture is a little bigger. It's a garbage can lid, also with some rocks in it. Both the garbage lid and the cake pan are dug into the ground.
Now, I just needed to sit back and wait for the toads. Waiting sounded terrible, so I imported some toads from the pond at my sister's house. Don't worry, they're only a few minutes away and have the same kind of toads that live near me. We went over there yesterday and my niece Jennifer had caught ten toads for me. They were in a big metal wash basin and it was absolutely X-rated. There were four couples locked in what appeared to be a love-death-grip. They had produced (and were continuing to produce) a ton of toad eggs.
By the time the toad houses were ready, most of the couples had separated. I took a few of the toads one-by-one and put them near the entrances to Toadtopia West. Two of them claimed houses almost immediately while one hopped up on top. I put another one near there, but I didn't see if it went in the third house or just hopped away.
The second picture above shows the whole of Toadtopia West, including the cake pan pond. The third house opens to the right making it hard to see.
By this point, there were two couple still attached. So, I took the other two singles and placed them near Toadtopia East. They both claimed houses right away. Since the couples were in water, I decided to put them in the trash can lid pond with the water and eggs from the wash basin. They both sat there for a minute or two and then climbed out. One couple hopped away under the deck (well the bottom one hopped, the top one just hung on), but I grabbed the other couple and put them right at the entrance to the last house. They eventually climbed in and turned to look out (the third image below is toad-pornographic and may not be safe for work).
Anyway, the project that may signal the parting of me and my senses is my toad house project. Toads provide many benefits to the area they live in. Ok, they provide one main benefit, but it's a good one: they eat bugs. One toad can eat 100 mosquitoes a night and thousands of slugs and other harmful (and I assume, some non-harmful) bugs a year. Obviously, my main motivation is the mosquitoes.
It is very easy to attract toads to your yard. Mainly, they just need a nice cool place to call home and some water.
There are a ton of places online that will sell nice toad houses that look nice and are appropriate for placing amongst your flowers or other places where they'll be seen. My toad houses were going to be out of view under my deck, so they didn't need to be particularly fetching. I have a lot of spare bricks that used to be a border at the front of our house. So, I decided to use those to form several toad houses. Basically all I did was lay two bricks parallel to each other about 2 1/2 inches apart and then more bricks across the gap as a roof. Then, to make it extra homey, I piled dirt over the whole thing.
I made two toad compounds (Toadtopia East and Toadtopia West) on opposite sides of the deck. Each compound has three homes and a water fixture. For Toadtopia West, the water fixture is an old cake pan with some rocks in it. Toadtopia East's fixture is a little bigger. It's a garbage can lid, also with some rocks in it. Both the garbage lid and the cake pan are dug into the ground.
Now, I just needed to sit back and wait for the toads. Waiting sounded terrible, so I imported some toads from the pond at my sister's house. Don't worry, they're only a few minutes away and have the same kind of toads that live near me. We went over there yesterday and my niece Jennifer had caught ten toads for me. They were in a big metal wash basin and it was absolutely X-rated. There were four couples locked in what appeared to be a love-death-grip. They had produced (and were continuing to produce) a ton of toad eggs.
By the time the toad houses were ready, most of the couples had separated. I took a few of the toads one-by-one and put them near the entrances to Toadtopia West. Two of them claimed houses almost immediately while one hopped up on top. I put another one near there, but I didn't see if it went in the third house or just hopped away.
The second picture above shows the whole of Toadtopia West, including the cake pan pond. The third house opens to the right making it hard to see.
By this point, there were two couple still attached. So, I took the other two singles and placed them near Toadtopia East. They both claimed houses right away. Since the couples were in water, I decided to put them in the trash can lid pond with the water and eggs from the wash basin. They both sat there for a minute or two and then climbed out. One couple hopped away under the deck (well the bottom one hopped, the top one just hung on), but I grabbed the other couple and put them right at the entrance to the last house. They eventually climbed in and turned to look out (the third image below is toad-pornographic and may not be safe for work).
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Cool! I remember being eaten alive by mosquitoes when I lived in New York (we don't have any in Cedar, so I wasn't used to remembering to put on bug spray), so I think the idea of having mosquito-eating toads is totally awesome. Good luck with your toad compounds and your meadow!
Out in the west toads make their own homes! At least, I think they do.
Laughed at your descriptions of those frogs 'tickling' each other. You're going to need to add on to Toadtopia when some of those eggs hatch. You could end up with such an overpopulated 'city' that you'll need to import mosquitoes.
Laughed at your descriptions of those frogs 'tickling' each other. You're going to need to add on to Toadtopia when some of those eggs hatch. You could end up with such an overpopulated 'city' that you'll need to import mosquitoes.
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