And There They Were
I didn’t notice when the attack of the mini toads began. One day I took a walk along a small creek and tiny toadlets darted from blades of grass to stems of weeds to tiny stones. The first one surprised me. The second looked cute as it bolted across the path.
By the tenth – nay, more – I was getting concerned.
Just how many of these were there?
I have watched many take-over-the-world movies, so I knew the routine. One movie, Kingdom of the Spiders, is seared into my brain because of the ending. The movie followed the invasion of spiders gone rogue. It ended with our hero hiding in a farm lodge overnight. He turns on the radio in the morning to learn how the invasion was stopped but hears nothing but static. Duh-duh-duh-duh.
Duh-duh-duh-duh
So he pries boards off a window to discover that the lodge and his entire town are encased with spider webs. Trapped like Frodo in Shelob’s web. Another duh-duh-duh-duh as the credits rolled.
I laughed at the ending, but I was re-thinking my response as I watched toads pop up everywhere. They started out small enough to hide under a penny. But they grew.
Soon my window wells had a dozen toads hiding in there.
Well, not hiding. Unable to get out. How had they gotten in there?
And, really, where had they come from?
The Tadpoles
My research says they started out as tadpoles. Well, this was the year for unusual rain, so that made sense. But I was sad that I had somehow missed seeing the darting little tadpoles in puddles. Those fascinate me.
Tadpoles turn into toadlets. Toadlets turn into toads. Gobs of them.
I wish I could tell you I started counting, but I didn’t. I noticed toads every time I took a walk and assumed I was seeing new ones. Soon, I was certain there were hundreds. Thousands.
OK, a kajillion of them.
I started asking friends. They confirmed they had a bunch, too. They wouldn’t confirm a kajillion, but I suspected. If I didn’t have a kajillion on my little farm, then together we must.
Friends were concerned. Which meant they were lamenting toads lost to mowers, car tires, and stomping toddlers. I think they were lamenting, anyway. It was hard to tell with the fist pumps.
One friend declined to have the rest of us visit, just in case we carried toad seeds on our shoes. She didn’t have any baby toads and didn’t want any. Although her adult kids had toads, so she’s likely infested by now, anyway.
I mean, how do you turn down the grandkids coming to visit? If little ones don’t bring colds, they probably bring baby toad seeds.
The Only Comfort
The only comfort with the toad invasion of 2023 is that as the toadlets grow in size, they diminish in number. I can’t explain that either, but it explains why toads aren’t used in math books to illustrate the number kajillion. (What do they use, anyway?)
I take comfort in the other thing: toads don’t spin webs and can be a useful ally if the spiders ever go rogue.
