"There is one!" my son shouted. He pounced upon it but because he was brought up in the burbs he was afraid to touch it. So, knowing what would happen when I picked it up I snatched it, and of course it pissed all over my hand. We placed it in our aquarium and being ignorant about what it actually considered dinner we fed it some ReptoMin floating food sticks which an equally ignorant teenager at Pets Mart had recommended that we feed it. A few days after finding the toad my son came running into my library.
"He's gone! The toad is gone!"
I scrambled from my chair and found myself looking at an empty aquarium. I asked my son if he had left the top off, but he denied it. Anyway, even if he had left the top of the aquarium off I could not imagine the toad jumping that high and getting out. Still, I had to ask myself the question "was there a toad jumping around the house somewhere?" I convinced myself that my son had left the top off of the aquarium and that the toad somehow managed to get out. My son didn't seem too overly concerned about it as he returned to watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I too returned to what I was doing and thought no more about it until the next day when I heard my son yell "dad he's back!!"
Once again I rushed into the bedroom where the aquarium sat on my son's dresser. Sure enough, there he was sitting in the wood chips as if to say "what's the problem folks!" I was now completely mystified but I soon figured out the toads mysterious Houdini-like disappearing act when I noticed a hollowed out area in the wood chips. The mystery was solved! He had buried himself. I also noticed that that he was getting real fat and wondered if it was because of the floating food sticks. This, I soon learned was not the reason for his obesity. It was the quantity of fleas inside of the aquarium that became snacks for the toad that my son and I soon nicknamed "Fat Ass."
Since my son lives with his mother in Florida for most of the year the responsibility of taking care of "Fat Ass" has, of course, fallen on me. Since I was the primary caregiver of "Fat Ass" it was my responsibility to make sure that he was properly looked after, unless, of course I would release him back to his wild state. However, I tried this, and felt bad, knowing that he would become a meal for some predator like a king snake or an owl. So, what did I do? Naturally I turned to Google and one of the first things that I learned was that toads only eat things that move. So much for my floating food sticks! I found some grubs and some isopods under a rock in the backyard and put them in front of "Fat Ass." It was an instant success! The first isopod never knew what hit it. One second it was unceremoniously and innocently crawling on a wood chip in front of "Fat Ass" and the next it was inside of the toads stomach. I wondered about the purpose of the isopod as it related to the food chain. To me, it seems that its only purpose was to crawl around under rocks and become a snack for the million other creatures that fed on it. It's only defense mechanism that I could see was rolling up into a tight little ball. It was like it was saying "look at me! I'm no snack I'm just a little pebble!" Crickets were next on "Fat Ass" Smorgasbord. He seemed to relish these crunchy delights like a child eating an ice cream cone. After watching "Fat Ass" in action it got me wondering about the food chain. In this small aquarium "Fat Ass" was the top predator. He had nothing to fear from the crickets, isopods, slugs or fleas that happened to invade his element. However, if I were to let "Fat Ass" back into the wild he would need to watch his back. A king snake might just be lurking in the tall grass waiting for a not so tasty toad treat! Or perhaps a great horned owl sitting stoically on a branch might swoop down on its unsuspecting victim. Then again, a few weeks ago while I was walking out to the mailbox I noticed a flattened toad that had obviously been the victim of another kind of predator, an F-150 tire. A trail of small sugar ants led up to the distorted remains in a gleeful procession. I watched this ceremony with some interest, and decided on performing a little experiment. I stomped my foot on the head of the procession closest to the sun baked carcass. This had the effect that I assumed it would. A few of the ants had been crushed by the giant intrusion that befell them from the sky causing the neat and ordered procession to become a chaotic frenzy. For a minute or so there was mass confusion among the little army as they dashed this way and that, but eventually order was restored, and the food line regained its orderly line. The reinforcements merely climbing over or around their fallen comrades as if nothing had happened. I almost imagined the steel jacketed soldiers performing a seven gun salute to the fallen when they returned to their hill.
"Ha!" I said. "If it wasn't for me running over this poor unfortunate critter you fellows would not be dining on this delicacy at the moment!"
I left the ants to their not too hard earned meal and returned to the house glad that I was not an ant, or a toad, or a cricket for that matter.
As of this writing I went out to look at the remains of the splattered toad in my driveway and was astounded to see that not a bit of evidence remains except for a slight discoloring on the white cement. I imagine that with the next rain this too will disappear and the only memory of that toads brief existence on this planet remains in the memory of the one who accidentally caused its demise. What had happened to the skeletal structure of the toad? Had this been carried off by the savage elements of nature as well? To what use or purpose? Nature is still a big mystery.
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