More Toads

I went home at lunch today to take my boy a sandwich (I have found that when I don't go home to feed him, Grayson eats nothing but Cheezits and orange Fanta all day). When I opened the back door to let the dogs out, this fat toad was sitting on the lintel, as if it was waiting to be let in.  

I of course picked him up, because that's what I do when I see a toad.  And Grayson and I passed him back and forth for a minute or two before he hopped out of our hands and began bouncing around the kitchen floor. We hustled him out into the garden and I refilled the little toad swimming pool I've set up out there for the tiny toadlets. Looks like I'll need a larger pool!

The Herps of Arkansas website tells me that, since this guy's glands on the back of his head are kidney shaped and separated from his eye ridges, he (or she, I have no idea how one sexes a toad) is an American Dwarf Toad. 

I like to know my toads. 

First Toads

Got my boy back on Saturday.  Summer is always a weird time for us.  Grayson spends time in El Paso with one set of grandparents; in Ruidoso, NM with another set; and in Norman, OK with a third set. He also spends a week in Scout Camp.  The rest of the time is divvied up between his dad's house and our house, most of it going to his dad. When it all shakes down I get him for a total of four weeks.

I'm glad his dad wants to spend long chunks of time with our son in the summer, and I'm glad Grayson enjoys going there. I'm sure it's fun for him to spend a couple of weeks at a stretch with his baby brother. I'm also glad that his grandparents arrange to spend time with him, and that he enjoys that time. But it's hard to lose him for so much of the summer.  There are so many things I want to do with him here that we just don't have time to do in the short time we have together.  If I could just take those weeks off work, we could do all kinds of things, but of course, that's not an option.

It's okay, I'm not complaining. It gets a little easier each time we do it.  But when he's home, I'm really ready for him to be home, and I want to cram as much good stuff into that time as I possibly can, while still allowing him his necessary teenaged-boy-sitting-in-front-of-the-computer time... which equals basically all the hours I"m at work.  I come home at work and watch and make lunch and small talk.  I'm happy just sitting on the sofa watching him be there.

This weekend we spent Saturday doing nothing at all.  He had been at Scout Camp for a week, living rough in tents without air conditioning, so he was reveling in the A.C. and electronic devices. Yesterday, we spent all day at the new water park. I think I have a water park hangover, in fact. My eyes still feel scorched from the sun, and I'm a bit pink around the forehead.  But I'm grateful for the time we spend together, and the fact that he wants me to be with him. I know the time is coming when he'll be off with his friends and won't want his old mom to join in.

John has made some new friends that came along, as well:  two twenty-somethings who work in the restaurant biz in town. Grayson thinks they're about the coolest things on legs. It's fun to watch him light up and join in the conversation when they're around. I'm sure it's good for him to have the chance to hang out with cool dudes, instead of just with us old farts who doze off on the sofa at 9:30. They all seem like kids to me, I admit it. I find myself wanting to mother these "boys:" reminding them to put on sunscreen and ordering pizza to feed everyone. I realize they're 15 years old than Grayson, but to me they just look like big, hungry boys, and my instinct is to feed them. They don't seem to mind.

I wonder what G will be like at that age?

I'm working, of course, for the rest of the week, so we'll have to slip in our fun times together in the evenings as best we can. Last night we went out at 9:30 and walked around the block under the big orange "Super Moon," looking for toads under the streetlights. A favorite activity of ours. John came along, sort of padding along behind us wondering why on earth he was doing this when he could be sitting on the sofa in the air conditioning. We only found one full-grown toad, but it was good-sized and easy to catch... peed on us both liberally and was then released. Lots of teeny juvenile toads, though, hopping around the damp concrete walkway at our front door, snacking on bugs.

Think we'll get headlamps and go to the Crystal Bridges Trail later this week: it's illuminated AND close to the stream, so we may get better toad sightings there, and maybe even a salamander if we go down by the water. We'll take a camera when we go.

Wild wildlife

I'm kind of geeky about animals:  I'm always watching for animals on the roadside when I drive, and any time I'm in any natural setting I'm walking with my eyes on the ground or up in the trees hoping to spot something. So I'm already predisposed to have more critter encounters than your average Joe.  Spending 12 years working in a natural history museum probably has something to do with it, as well.  I rescued two turtles from the road lately, and John and I surprised a six-foot bull-snake on a pile of rocks at the river a few weeks ago.  That was exciting.

But none of that explains why there has been a catbird throwing itself against my windows for the past few weeks.  I'd say that was the start of the recent spate of animal adventures, but really it started when the mama robin took up residence in the Boston fern outside our dining room windows and raised a nest of three babies, right before our eyes.  It was like having the National Geographic Channel on all the time. My family came to visit from Oklahoma and we spent hours just sitting at the dining room table, chatting and watching the robin parents feed their scrawny, funny-looking little dinosaur babies.

But back to the catbird.  It started about 6:00 one morning, maybe a month ago:  this bird was throwing itself repeatedly at my bedroom window from the nearby lilac bush.  Thump, thump, thump.  Then it moved to another window and kept it up over there:  thump thump.  And back to the lilac.  I left that morning just after 8 a.m. and got home at 6 that evening to find the poor thing still at it.  Everyone said he was fighting with his reflection in the window, so I closed the blinds, hoping to cut back on the window's reflectivity. Worked like a charm:  the bird moved to the dining room windows and took up the fight anew, from a perch on the other Boston fern (not the one that had previously housed the robin family).

Now his attacks had a different tenor, however. Instead of thumping the window, he was just sort of flying at it and perching briefly with his claws gripping the cross-piece in the pane (there's a word for that, but I've no idea what it is). It clings there, then flaps back to the fern, or the back of a chair, or the crepe myrtle bush nearby, only to sally forth again:  flap and cling, flap and cling.

I began to wonder if the bird was trying to get my attention.  What would happen if in between flaps one time I just opened the window?  (I didn't, though)

This went on for two weeks, with gradually less and less frequency.  Now he just turns up once every few days for a few desultory flap attacks, then he goes away.

Now it's tiny toads, though.

About a week ago I was working in the garden and noticed a teeny tiny toadlet clambering about in the grass.  Soon I saw another one, and another, and when I went to the front yard to water the flower bed, they were hopping in every direction!  Toads.  Dozens of itsy bitsy toads.

And you know what I think they're eating?  Itsy bitsy grasshoppers.  I didn't even know you could get grasshoppers this small, but I've seen a few that are about the size of  (I shit you not) a grain of rice. I had to really squint to even see what they were!

Anyway, I have toads.  I can't mow close to the flowerbeds because I'm paranoid about killing some of them.  And I have to really watch where I'm putting my feet along the front sidewalk.  I can't imagine how awful I'd feel if I squished one.  I realize that there are a lot of them for a reason:  prey animals breed like, well, rabbits, because they are needed to feed other animals.  So I know the toads are being snapped up left and right by everything from robins to garter snakes.  But I hope as many of them as possible will make it to adulthood, because I would love to have a garden full of toads.  They're cute, they have soft little bellies, and they eat bugs.

There's another wildlife oddity happening that I haven't quite worked out yet. Something is digging up out of my lawn.  A gopher or mole, I'm sure, though I'd love it if it was some big ole' spadefoot toad.  I've seen the dirt coming up, even seen it move a bit once, but have yet to identify the digger.  Just hoping the dogs don't identify it first by digging it up and devouring it.