The wife was raking up some stray leaves that had fallen from the mango tree alongside our driveway ... skritch skratch went the little bamboo rake on the asphalt. Then, she stopped.
"There's a dead toad between the orchid pots," she advised me. Instead of just raking it up into the pan and tossing it under the mango tree, she had chosen to involve me in the situation. "Can you throw it in the rubbish bin for me?"
See, she expected me to pick it up, put it in a plastic bag, roll up the bag, and throw it away for her. I don't blame her, actually. Have you ever come across a dead toad in the road, one that was squished by a car several days earlier? It really smells bad.
Be that as it may, I told her to give me the rake and dust pan and I'd throw it under the tree to provide nutrients for the plants and whatever else lurked there at night. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, y'know.
But when I rolled it into the dustbin, the freaking thing came to life, righting itself, striking a pose and staring me right straight in the eye. Wow, what an ugly bugger! Toads aren't my favorite animals, but they ARE pretty fascinating. They just lumber about in their dark black-brown ugliness, looking fierce and menacing.They're not, y'know ... fierce and menacing, that is. But they do have a defense. They exude a milky white substance from the pores of their ugly warty skin. And that liquid is poisonous. Back in 1935, the Australians imported cane toads from Hawaii in an effort to control cane beetles.
Whoops! Think about it. The beetles fed on leaves ('way up on the plant), and toads live on the ground ('way down near the plant). The result? No impact at all on the cane beetles. However, the toads proliferated and animals that preyed on them would be poisoned and die ... especially pet dogs. Yikes!
Ah, but I digress. We let that toad live and for all I know it's still there among the orchid pots munching away on insects. And that's as it should be.
Bravo, Big ol' Bufo!
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