A toad swallows with its eyes. Her tongue is hinged at the front of her mouth, useless for pushing food down — so when she catches a beetle, she pulls her own eyeballs down through the roof of her mouth and uses them to shove the meal into her throat. Every bug she eats, she blinks to get it down. That's the strangest thing the toad in your garden does, but it's nowhere near the only one. She's out every night working through the slugs, cutworms, and beetles going after your seedlings — quiet pest control that asks nothing but a damp, shady corner. She drinks through her skin instead of her mouth, pressing her belly to wet ground. The bumps on her back aren't warts and never were, so there's nothing to catch by lifting her gently. And come winter she digs in backward below the frost line, then returns in spring to the very same bed, because toads are creatures of habit — the one out there tonight is likely the one you saw last June. Most don't survive their first year. The ones that do can outlive your dog. The full rundown's in the graphic. 🐸