Toad Friend

Since we've lived in our lovely home, we've had this toad who is like our Punxsutawney Phil- once he comes out of his winter hibernation, we know the weather is going to be consistently fairly wonderful! We call him Toad Friend. I suppose we could name him something more creative, but we're sticking with Toad Friend (there is a serious lack of originality when I name things- hence the cat of my teen years: Baby Kitty, seriously, it's kind of sad). Now unlike most amphibians, this toad is unafraid of us, we can walk right up to him and even touch him (at least I think its a him, don't know how to tell the difference) and he doesn't hop frantically away like other amphibians.

Tonight it was very windy (weird for a place called Hurricane...) so Chad went outside to put our garbage cans away. He came back in holding a handful of green goop (or so it looked like from my point of view). I asked with a bit of disgust, "Honey, what are you holding?" He turned his hand so I could see it and it was TOAD FRIEND! He was just hanging out in Chad's hand, chillin'. He had been hiding behind the car and Chad almost ran over him with the garbage cans (SAD), so Chad picked him up and brought him in. I was SO happy to see our Toad Friend! Well, we were worried that he would warm up too much from being in Chad's hand and being in the house, so Chad put him back outside. Imagine, if you will, the scene in Lord of the Rings where Bilbo is leaving the ring for Frodo. The ring doesn't want to leave Bilbo's hand and it is sticking to it as it slides slowly down to the floor. That is what it was like for Chad to get Toad Friend off his hand. We watched him for a minute and felt extremely guilty as he watched us close the door. About 20 minutes later we wanted to see if he had gone to eat some of the crickets or if he had hopped off. Chad opened the door and I couldn't see him, so I thought he had gone, but Chad made this sad noise and I looked down- Toad Friend had hopped up to the door and was sitting at our door- like a dog or cat would if they wanted to come inside. OH MY GOSH, we felt SO BAD putting the dang toad outside! Its a toad, it lives outside, but we felt so sad that we couldn't bring him inside mostly because we didn't want to find a toad (especially Toad Friend) dead in the morning from overheating or something... We decided we need a toad door, if only it wouldn't act as a scorpion door or spider door too.

There's the story of the evening. And a picture of Toad Friend. The end.