I have had a few tiny little cricket frogs and some small (perhaps juvenile?) fowlers toads in my garden. I have been trying to make them at home, since the aphids have been so bad this year. They seem to have helped. Well, the toads have just disappeared, I'm assuming they are just "moving on," but now I'm finding the carcasses of cricket frogs all over.
Now, when we get a summer rain, it can rain so hard and fast in such a short ammount of time, it isn't uncommon to see a couple of dead frogs, but these have been turning up even on sunny days. I keep finding them on my sidewalk just outside the flowerbed where they were living.
I have seen a praying mantis longer than my middle finger hanging around my garden. I left him alone because I read he'd help with the aphids too. I have seen him eating something that looked like it had a skeleton, though, I didn't get close enough to find out, but he is at least twice the size of the cricket frogs, which don't get much bigger than an inch and are the smallest vertebrates in north America.
I have been careful not to spray anything around the areas where I have seen the frogs and toads, and only use super certified organic stuff elsewhere. But now I'm worried that I might be killing them somehow.
And while I know that the proper thing to do is to let nature take it's course if the mantis is the culprit, I still hate it. The tiny frogs are just so much cuter than this monster of a mantis. LOL.
Is there anything I can do?