Over the past few months, The Mountaineer has heard reports of unusually large numbers of toads turning up on farms in the prairie west of town. Those who have shared information with us have joked that the unusual phenomena resembles one of the plagues in the book of Exodus. I began looking into the matter, thinking it might be an interesting bit of local ecological news, and learned that a similar population spike took place in town a little over a decade ago. Digging into the last century of Mountaineer back issues revealed that the occasional "plague of toads" isn't all that unusual. I cam...