2 Hours Later

My fascination began a long time ago . . .

I remember as a little girl, going over to my friend Paul's house, to see the tadpoles swimming around in the window well in his backyard.

I remember, also as a little girl, watching my older brother disect a frog, and then cook up the frog legs to eat.

I remember on summer nights, monsoon kind of nights, going outside and hearing the chorus of toads coming from the wash across from our house.

And of course, I remember catching numerous toads, little ones and big ones, as they scampered across our yard.

I love frogs and toads. I think they are fascinating.

We caught some really tiny toads once on a family excursion, and brought them home to live in our backyard. They of course buried down somewhere in the yard, never to be seen again, but the kids (and I) still believe they are here, hiding away in the mud, and waiting for the smell of monsoon rain to make their way out of hiding.

We saw one such toad, a few years back, swimming in the flood waters that collect in our cul-de-sac. I tried to catch it. Jonathon really wanted to see a toad in "real life," but I couldn't catch it. I tried hard, wading out in the water, but to no avail. Jonathon was heart broken, and cried himself to sleep that night. James had a different reaction, and had nightmares for the next couple of months. He would wake up screaming that there was a giant toad hopping up the stairs.

I caught a smallish one about a month ago, as it came hopping past me while I was gardening. The kids loved it, all except James, who wouldn't touch it at all.

Tonight, as I came in from outside, a really big toad hopped along with me towards the house. I, of course, yelled into the house for everyone to come out quickly. It had been a bit of a late night with us shoveling rock in the front yard, and Christine having a late night with a friend. The two youngest were asleep, but the others came running.

The toad had positioned itself in the corner by the front door, but then suddenly disappeared. This was a huge toad, and we were mystified for a moment, until Rebekah discovered that the front door had accidentally been left open. Sure enough, that toad was hopping across our living room, and it ducked into a little space at the base of our bookshelves just before we got to it. We spent an hour trying to get that thing out from behind the bookshelves (moving the shelves was NOT an option - there's 3 of them, and they are massive).

We finally scared the poor thing out from behind the shelves. We put it in Joseph's old fish tank, so that we could take a better look at it. That wasn't enough though; we wanted to see the old toad in action, so the girls went off scaveging for bugs. We watched it eat 2 bugs and a spider, and that was amazing to actually see it's tongue in action.

The kids tried to wake up James to see the toad. Not too much luck. He finally awoke after awhile, and he and I followed the toad around the backyard to see where it would hop to. Two hours later we finally left the toad alone, and went in to go to bed. 12:15 became our bedtime (and I'm usually the kind of mom that has her kids to bed early). Oh well, it's summer afterall, and some things are just too exciting to sleep through.