That Time My Mother Met the Toad

... in the toilet

All the recent talk of frogs and toads (scroll back over the past couple of newsletters) reminded me of an incident that happened back in Australia when my mother was very pregnant with my brother. This would have been in about 1964 and I believe my parents were living in a small bungalow in a newly-finished subdivision for recent imports from England.

Mom, wearing her pink nightie and cat’s-eye glasses, made a trip to the loo in the wee hours of the morning when she came face to face with…

… a massive toad. I’m not sure how said toad arrived there but, judging by the number of photos from Australia that pop up when you Google frogs and toads in toilets, this isn’t an uncommon happening.

Upon hearing Mom let out an ear-splitting scream, my father leaped out of bed. “Is the baby coming?”

“No! You have to deal with that!” She pointed at the monster in the bowl and backed away, leaving my father to extricate the unwelcome amphibian.

[For those of you who have been around long enough to remember the tarantula story, you may see a bit of a pattern emerging… If you are new and are dying to know how the arachnid story turned out, here’s the link.]

Armed with some kitchen implements, my father faced off with the toad.

My understanding of what happened next is that Dad was able to flip the toad out of the toilet and onto the floor but the toad didn’t want anything to do with being shooed out the front door. There was considerable shrieking and attempts to sweep it outside with a broom before my parents gave up and decided it was best to contain the slippery intruder until morning.

Dad flipped a cooking pot upside down over the toad, who continued to clunk around the linoleum floor, dragging the pot behind him for the rest of the night. I’m not sure whether it was a particularly large toad or a particularly flimsy pot, but as the story was told, nobody slept for the rest of the night.

Ah, life Down Under.

At least it wasn’t one of these.

[Note: For those who are paying attention to the details, when I drew my first page of frogs, I had a heck of a time with their back legs. It was only after I read Dad’s note on his exploratory drawings where he wrote Three sections for rear leg that I realized that yes, indeed, the back legs of frogs and toads have three sections and not two. My toilet toad definitely looks better with the correct number of limb components even if they aren’t arranged exactly right. Man, this whole pay attention and OBSERVE thing is WAY harder than I would have guessed. I mean, I was looking at frog photos as reference and I STILL didn’t notice the three sections per hind appendage. Thanks for the tip, Dad!]