Kissing Toads: My Daughter's Obsession

You'd have to know my daughter to really get this story, but it makes for fun re-telling and certainly will be food for fodder as she grows and I tease her about it.

Yesterday afternoon as I was spending some quality garden therapy – i.e. weeding – I found a toad. Not just any toad, but a toad large enough to handle what I knew was bound to happen. I called to the kids to come over and see it. They immediately did and began squealing with delight at my find, my daughter grabbing it and clutching it in her little hands and running happily away.

The next thing I knew, my children and two friends were running around the back yard with it, playing with it in the playhouse. Playing with it in the sandbox. Playing with it down the slide. The next thing I knew they had a small box, “Toady’s house" and swimming pool made from a bowl from the kitchen. Or should I saw using a bowl that is now formerly from my kitchen.

I certainly worried that the toad might expire from exhaustion, too much “playing” or possibly just from being “loved” too much from my daughter, but the kids seemed to be dong OK with the poor thing.

An hour later I called everyone in for dinner. My daughter of course excitedly ran in, toad in hand.

“Mom can I keep Toady?”

“No honey.”

“Can I keep him for just a little while?”

“No honey. Toady has had enough fun for the day.”

“But I can set him free after dinner.”

“No honey, Toady needs to be put outdoors with his other toad friends.”

“But mom. I can set him free at the soccer field. I have seen lots of toads there.”

“No honey, Toady needs to go back where we found him.”

“Moooom, I would take good care of him though.”

“I know honey, but Toady needs to eat the bugs from our garden. He helps keep spiders and mosquitoes from getting to us.”

I thought that last bit might be an incentive as my daughter hates mosquitoes and spiders. Turns out I was right. My daughter then gave in, carrying the toad outside, to be set free. Or so I thought.

My daughter ran in ahead of my son, quickly washing up and coming to the kitchen, making a quick retreat to close her bedroom door when she saw her brother. It was the shrieking, screaming and yelling that tipped me off that something else might be happening altogether.

It must have been my daughter’s actions that tipped my son off. After he washed his hands he went to enter my daughter’s bedroom. She however was hovering nearby, standing guard and fighting to keep him out. This was when my husband intervened.

He pulled the kids apart and methodically went through my daughter’s bedroom. Toady wasn’t in the Hexbug Hive. He wasn’t in the LPS Treehouse either. He wasn’t even tucked into the Zhu Zhu Pet bed. He was however hidden carefully in my daughter’s pink, frilly “treasure box” covered with a blanket to keep him warm.

My poor pitiful daughter cried hysterically as my husband left her room, taking Toady back into the garden to live. We are now the “worst parents ever” or at least we will be until my daughter finds some new creature to love, play with and give a home!