Rain song may belong to eastern spade-foot frog
By My Courier-Tribune
According to Alex Holmes, Missouri Department of Conservation nature center assistant manager, shares there is a creature in Missouri that also longs for drenching rain. Not for the spectacle of thunderheads and lightning, but for the nurturing rain of a powerful storm.
This is the eastern spade-foot frog. This pudgy little frog is also called a spadefoot “toad” because it has bumpy skin, poison glands, and short, land-hopping legs. It is not, however, particularly closely related to toads at all. This is a frog with the patience of a monk, the smell of garlic, and eyes like your favorite Jim Henson puppet.
The spade-foot’s life is one of restfulness, punctuated with exuberant bouts of feeding and breeding. The name spade-foot refers to the tough projections on its hind feet used for excavating spiral-shaped burrows into soft soils. Where it waits. When the rains come, typically April through July, these amphibians emerge. The vocalizations of this frog are legendary, not for their beauty, but for their utter silliness.
As these frogs sing and celebrate, eggs are laid in temporary pools. The eggs and tadpoles are in a race for survival, the temporary pools have an evaporation date, and the tadpoles need to grow up quickly to survive. They can complete their metamorphosis from tadpole to froglet in as little as two weeks.
Living life on the edge does have its consequences. But these temporary pools don’t always last long enough for the young to mature. Through research, spade-foot tadpoles were only successful in making it to adulthood 24% of the time over 20 years of documenting.
Holmes writes, “In the story of this little frog is a lesson we’ve explored here before. Water is life. It is something worth waking up for. It is worth singing about. It is nurturing. So, I invite you to play the part of the spade-foot this summer. Never forget the joy of a rainstorm. Watch from your window, or better yet, go be a kid again and dance in the beauty of a downpour.”
