The gargantuan Sonora Desert Toad, for example, is America’s largest toad at up to 8″ and weighing over 2 pounds. When you pick one up, its blubbery folds roll over your hand like a water bottle. Their mouth is an indiscriminate consumption machine willing to devour anything small enough to fit, including snakes, rodents, tarantulas and scorpions. Paratoid glands on several parts of their body release a highly toxic poison that’s responsible for killing more domestic dogs that rattlesnakes do. The poison is exuded when pressure is put on the glands. They’re habitat generalists that I encountered everywhere from lowland desert scrub to the mountain sides of the Sky Islands.