American toad having trouble eating

[RedSonja]

Hello all! I recently began working at a small nature museum. One of our exhibit animals is an American toad. I don't know its age or history, but to this point it has always eaten well - crickets and waxworms, mostly.

In the past two weeks it has started having trouble catching its prey. I'll put the worms in its bowl, it targets and strikes at them, but never manages to connect. I've tried placing the food straight on the substrate (soil), but that doesn't seem to help. Today I used a waxworm container lid, thinking that maybe the high color contrast would help if it was a vision problem, but that doesn't seem to have made much difference either.

As far as I can tell, it's never been hand fed, as it shows zero inclination to take prey from tongs. I've force fed twice, just to keep it alive, but that's obviously super stressful for the toad, and I don't want to keep doing it if I don't have to.

Any suggestions? Thank you!