12/12/2025
🐸 The Toad: I AM SLEEPING IN YOUR FLOWER POT.
The Scenario: The Tidy Garden
In the autumn, gardeners diligently clean up and organize their supplies, including emptying and stacking flowerpots, containers, and planters. These containers, often overlooked as simple debris, provide ideal, yet temporary, hibernation spots for toads.
Species Focus: The American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus) or the Fowler's Toad (Anaxyrus fowleri)—common garden toads across the U.S.
Before you stack your pots for winter, check the dirt. I burrow down to escape the frost. Don't bury me alive under a stack of ceramic.
😴 The Reality: The Life-Saving Burrow
Toads are ectotherms (cold-blooded) and must enter a state of brumation (amphibian hibernation) to survive the winter freeze. They require specific conditions—stable temperature and sufficient moisture—which a discarded pot often mimics perfectly.
1. The Perfect Winter Chamber (The Unseen Side):
Thermal Stability: Toads often burrow several inches below the frost line to avoid freezing. A deep flowerpot, especially one left outdoors with soil still inside, provides an enclosed, insulated space that protects them from rapid temperature fluctuations and the deepest frost.
Moisture Retention: The sides of the pot help to retain the necessary moisture. Unlike a dry patch of open ground, the soil inside the pot provides a humid, safe environment, preventing the toad from desiccating (drying out) during its long sleep.
The Attraction: The rich, soft potting mix and the shelter provided by the container attract the toad, which sees it as a ready-made, easy-to-dig burrow site.
2. The Fatal Stacking:
Crushing and Smothering: When gardeners clean up, they often stack empty, inverted pots tightly together in a shed or garage. A toad that has already burrowed into the soil of one of these pots is either crushed by the weight of the ceramic stack or is smothered and trapped within the pot, unable to surface when spring arrives.
Wrong Temperature: Moving a pot containing a brumating toad into a heated garage or basement can be just as deadly. The warmth can wake the toad prematurely (breaking its brumation state), causing it to expend all its stored energy reserves (fat) without any available food sources, leading to death by starvation.
🤝 Our Duty: Check the Vessel
The message requires the gardener to adopt a simple, mindful check before putting away equipment.
The Simple Act: When emptying or moving any outdoor container, always look into the soil and give it a quick poke. If you encounter a toad, gently scoop it and the soil out.
The Safe Relocation: Place the toad in a safe, undisturbed location outdoors that provides alternative shelter—such as a compost pile, a thick layer of leaf litter, or a wildlife-designated rock pile—allowing it to dig a new, permanent burrow for the winter.
Your flowerpots are temporary havens for life. Check the soil before stacking, and let the gardener's helper safely sleep until spring.
