Wednesday, June 27, 2012

The Kitchen Toad

Of course we have a kitchen toad, don't you? Our toad lives under the fridge and behind/below the cabinets during the daytime, happily out-of-sight. Every night, however, you can find him enjoying a refreshing dip in the bowl of dog water. I've noticed, in the mornings, that the dogs don't want to drink out of that bowl until it's been emptied and refilled. Hmmm.

Last night I took a few pictures of the kitchen toad. They aren't great pictures, because of the poor lighting, but I really did want to share our family toad with you. Here he is:


I wasn't sure you'd be able to tell the size of our impressive toad, from that first picture, so I put a carton with a few eggs down next to the bowl:


Now, you might expect that I'd consider a large toad residing in the kitchen to be a bad thing, but I know what toads eat. They eat bugs. And I'd imagine that a big toad would eat big bugs. Or possibly many bugs. Or, if we're really lucky, he'd eat many big bugs! And I'd rather have a large, usually invisible toad in my kitchen than lots of big bugs. Really now, wouldn't you?

(Also, the toad moves slowly, and hasn't show any interest in climbing across my bed, unlike the scorpions and hairy spiders . . . so the toad can stay.)

Just for fun - and a bit of contrast - I thought I'd also share some pictures Boo took at the bridge construction site a few months ago:


Can you see what Boo saw?


Can you see it now?


Here's help for those (like me) with aging eyes!

Sooo, that's the large and the small of it!

2 comments:

Patty said...

Trish, that looks like a bufo toad, and if it is, it can poison your dogs. That may be why they don't want to drink from the bowl. "Bufo's are attracted to dogs' watering dishes ......." If the kids lick the toad, they'll just hallucinate ;-D

http://www.fondrenpetcare.com/bufo_toad.htm

Patty said...

I know this is OT, but I couldn't find another way to contact you. Where do you get your canning supplies? I have some I brought with me, but not enough. I haven't found any here in Colon.