During the summer monsoon season, something extraordinary happens in the southwest corner of Farber Field. The pounding of rain drops serves as a wake up call to some interesting creatures that it’s time to resurface from their subterranean homes to breed. They are Coach’s Spadefoot Toads and Pueblo is their home.
Although we did not see the toads breeding, we were able to capture the thousands of eggs they left behind. They look like flowers, but instead of petals, they are full of eggs.
It doesn’t take long for eggs to become tadpoles, usually about 15hrs. The very next day the pond was full of life and this is what it looked like:
Sadly, we saw fewer and fewer tadpoles every time we visited the pond after that. It takes about two weeks and a strong will for a tadpole to mature into a young frog. Of the thousands of eggs that started, very few survived, as many simply died and others were eaten by birds.
It also didn’t help that it hardly rained during the subsequent days. Mr. Michael Smith, a Biology Teacher at Pueblo, had to drag water hoses to fill in the pond. He really went out of his way to help these amphibians survive. Kudos to him.
In the end we did not see any young frogs jumping around, but it sure was an interesting phenomenon to witness. One that we hope will continue happening at Pueblo every summer for years to come.