Anyone else have a barn toad? We currently have 2, a gigantic one and a much smaller one. They patrol for flies and surprise and entertain us. I find them cute.
I have a couple - one large, one small . They mostly stay outside, along the edge of the barn close to the water spigot.
1 Like
They seldom come in the barn, but I find them in the sawdust as we spread bedding from the outside pIle in a shed. Have to collect them to return to the outside again. We do have garter snakes, so I expect they eat a lot of the small toads. My most consIstantly visible toad is a large one who lives under a bush beside the outside water faucet on the house. He croaks when I step near to turn on the water.
1 Like
We have one. Only seen infrequently, but he is there and has been for some time, judging by his size.
Alas, only of the human variety 
14 Likes
I think unfortunately the barn cat would take them down 
:lol::lol::lol:
2 Likes
Toads exude poison thru their skin, which is why most dogs and cats leave them alone. I have never found any chewed on toads here, just dead ones with a complete body. Frogs are fair game, cats and dogs do chase them. I like seeing toads but always jump when I uncover a dug-in one in the garden weeding or putting in a new plant, because the toads scream! Not a croak noise, guess because I scared them.
3 Likes
:lol: I had a cat that was supremely interested in the toads… She came in foaming at the mouth one day (!!!) and terrified us all. Turns out she had been trying to catch/eat the toad, hated the taste, but kept going back to lick it to be sure she didn’t want to do that.
RE: barn toads - Two cheerfully rotund fellows live near where one side of the barn hoses off their horses outside. I presume it’s always wet in warm weather and excellent habitat for them. They’re fun to see.
3 Likes
OMG I am now dying for a barn toad!! We get frogs when there are puddles of water from rain, but we do not have resident barn toads.
We have resident deer (and the barn has been fully kitted out for them, including a fountain that I am pretty sure exists solely for them to drink out of and rails of arena fence missing so they can go into the rings to get out of the heat and sleep :)) and jackrabbits.
5 Likes
I love toads!
When my cousins and I were little, every time we’d spot a toad at my grandparents house my grandpa would say “Oh, there’s Chuckie”! So, we started calling toads “chuckies” and we still do now, 40+ years later, lol!
5 Likes
We have a front porch toad! Granted, the house is ~100 yards or so from the barn, so he may as well wear both hats. I love him. :yes:
1 Like
At our old house with a pool we had Delila! She would sometimes ride around on the floats if we left them in the pool and you could NOT catch her. The crazy thing was that there was a perfectly good pond 100 feet away, but, nooooo she wanted the pool! She was one big momma!
I did have a couple of young girls visit who tag-teamed and caught her, but she was back the next day!
1 Like
We have lots of toads hopping around at my place. I have to watch where I step, but I like them.
1 Like
No toads but we did have a resident spider. He (or she) was beautiful. Half the body was black and the other half was striped yellow and black and about 3 inches including legs. I have a great respect for garden spiders and will ferry them outside if they accidently end up in the house. The big brown house spiders are dead meat.
Back to our regularly scheduled thread…
We used to get a bunch of them hanging out in the arena at night. Which seemed so surprising - there was no water. But riding at night, they’d go hopping under foot. I was always worried the horse would step on them!
We also had a barn gopher snake. He was HUGE.
At my new place, we have a barn skunk named Flower. She hops up to the table and eats the cat food each evening. and one of the ladies at the barn will go up and shooshoo her if someone needs to go in that area, and Flower hops off. She surprised us with two babies a couple months back <3
4 Likes
I have a few pairs. BTW, big ones are female, small ones are male. Ask me how I know 
We have a new one this year that we named Ruby. I see it in the barn every few days. Beats the frogs that somehow swim up my bedroom-suite toilet! I’ve had about five of those. Always scares the heck out of me when I lift the lid!
1 Like
In Tennessee, I had a really cool orange one who I named Glen Phillips. (1990s music fans might get the reference)
New farm in Maryland, I have approximately eleventy billion of them at last count. One fell from the sky and smacked me in the head the other night; I wasn’t sure if that was the start of a biblical plague or what.
4 Likes
That’s too funny.
2 Likes
