We have the most astonishing good fortune when it comes to toads.
Maybe a month ago, Isaac was gouging a hole in the garden with the "jet" setting on the hose, when he discovered a wonderful little hop toad. Or maybe excavated him from his burrow. He called me over and together we captured the toad and put him in a mason jar. Isaac named him "Mr. Lumpy." The next day he brought Mr. Lumpy to school "to show the children" (Isaac is always very interested in the children– as if it's a group he doesn't belong to.) Our original idea was straight catch and release, but we ended up keeping him for a week or so. I bought him a critter keeper at the pet store– I went in and announced "I need a home for a small toad"– which yielded immediate results. I also bought a dozen small crickets to feed him. The pet store man suggested that I feed him only four crickets and four worms on the first day, but i had no handy place to keep the crickets so I just threw them all in. I figured he would eat his fill and the rest would hang around waiting to get eaten when he got hungry again. But inevitably he gorged on them all and then was so full he could barely walk. Subsequently I learned from toadilytoads.com that toads are natural gluttons, and this is part of what makes them so adorable.
We enjoyed having Mr. Lumpy around– Isaac slept with him beside the bed, carried him to the table for meals, etc. But when we were going out of town, we decided to feed him a feast of crickets and set him free. However toads tend to stay around. I've seen him outside a few times, and the other day he was sitting halfway in a hole and he let me pet him! He's gained a lot of weight since I last saw him, but he was so tame that I have no doubts that he's the same good old toad.
So then last weekend we were out for a walk with my dad and step-mom, who were here from out of town. For some reason, Isaac was having a long, continuous tantrum the entire way. He didn't WANT to go on this walk at all– not here, not on this path, not with his bike, not this direction, and so on and so forth. It was really getting tiresome. Ben had taken him back towards the car a couple times and was struggling in general over every detail of it, when lady luck smiled on us. A tiny, TINY toad hopped across the path. It was so tiny that at first glance I thought it was a little cricket. When I realized it was a toad, I'll have to admit that i was awed and fascinated. After a while I decided to try to distract Isaac from his foul mood by suggesting that we catch some of the toads and put them in his canteen to bring him. This project was a big success. We caught four and decided that was enough. We came home and set up a habitat for them with leaf litter and a few ants. Then over the last week we've caught six more– even Elias caught one!
Isaac named them "The Smooth Brothers." Individually their names are Cherry, Fruit Fly, Tongue, Hop, Lightning, Zeppo, Mr. Climb, Elias, Abraham (named by this lady who was here when Elias caught it– she was so impressed!) and the tenth is as yet unnamed. Indeed, it's gotten so that I see them here and there and just — don't catch them! I think our critter keeper is at capacity. Isaac's plan is to keep them until they are "big enough to take care of themselves." Which… well technically they are able to do that now, although I can see that nature's plan is to go with sheer quantity and hope that some of them survive. Their tininess is actually sort of a challenge in terms of husbandry… I put some ants in there, and found that the ants were much bigger than many of the toads. I put in a housefly and saw that it was the same size as some of the toads. The best way to feed them, it turns out, is to catch them and dump out their old leaf littter. THen throw in some new, with all the tiny eyelash-sized worms and almost invisible fruit fly like bugs and what not that I assume they eat when out in the wild.
Yesterday we caught them into a jar and I took a photo for you. That dime is for scale!
PS: my friend Sam is visiting and wants to be included in this blog post. "Why stand in the way of my only chance at fame?" has asks. Well, if you put it that way– of course. Sam is free to ride my coattails to glory.