And Toad Makes 6

Almost a year ago our neighbors (who, by the way are lovely people and we've really enjoyed getting to know!) completed a beautiful landscaping project. Their last task was to spread the massive pile of washed river rock in the landscape beds, and like other parts of the project this task was quickly completed. Since BW finds it impossible to respect boundaries unless they are marked by 6 foot razor wire fences, he of course (with JB in tow) went to check out the rocks... And that, my friends was when the number of occupants in our house grew by one.

After a suspiciously quiet period of time, the kids burst into the house with squeals of delight and screams of terror. Somehow between the shrieks and madness of two small excited children talking at the same time, BW managed to lift his hand and proudly display his trophy... a small, but very wriggly .... *sigh* ... toad.

Now, we live NOWHERE near a toad's habitat. We live in a suburban community. There are lots of green spaces and green ways - and thusly we have lots of wildlife... raccoons, skunks, geese, squirrels, foxes, birds galore and the occasional garter snake, but no lizards, frogs or toads.

In the spirit of science and adventure and for the sake of being a good mama, we kept the ever-so-creatively named 'Mr. Toad', thinking that during the few weeks the thing managed to survive, we'd learn a lot about nature, revisit the topics of life and death, and go on our merry way after a brief interruption to the normal chaos.

Visiting all of the thrift stores in town that day gained us an appropriately sized tank, the pet store garnered crickets and a pile of leftover topsoil from the neighbors gave us the native soil that we think toad came from. Of course, toad's new home was not complete without a pile of rocks that BW 'found' to build a 'house' for the dude.

After hours of research we determined that Mr. Toad is most likely a rocky mountain toad, and when he hopped into our lives, was probably only a week or two old... meaning that we wouldn't find out if it was a 'he' or a 'she' for several more months, if it lived that long... which we didn't expect... which, it has. This is one of those times where you can't quite decide if you should pat yourself on the back for a job well done, or cringe because you've done such a good job when you didn't mean to.

Now that a year has passed, BW and JB are sad because "Mr." toad hasn't begun croaking yet. Now, months ago, after a process of elimination I'd pretty much determined that "Mr."" toad was actually a "Ms." toad, and was doomed never to croak... well, in a fashion meant for attracting a mate, at least. But, since we've assumed all along that he was a he, not a she, we continue on with the gross error.

We have found tho, that in following the trends of toad, that he is extremely accurate at predicting bad weather and massive storms. Over the course of the fall and winter, if we noticed that he had snuggled himself into the moist soil, we'd pull out the stormy wardrobe. If we noticed that he buried himself, we'd batten down the hatches and stock up on perishables. If we couldn't find him, we'd stock up the liquor closet and hope the blizzard didn't last longer than the stupor. And the dude was nearly always right... Not that it helped our wallet much... it was a long winter, but we were well prepared.

So, as we celebrate one year with Mr. Toad, we'll get him an extra box of crickets, a fresh pool of distilled water, yell at BW to let the dude have one day of peace, and go about the chaos... and maybe one day, we'll get our end table back.