It was 13 degrees when I woke up to take the dogs out at 5:15 a.m. For three years now, I have risen well ahead of time to leave for work, just so I can get my daily writing done. My goal time is 6:00 A.I.S* in the living room chair where my lap desk, lamp, and computer are arranged.
I was trying to talk myself out of a shower in this insane cold, but I knew I needed what my husband calls “climatizing” – – water that regulates the body to the normal temperature before heading out into the world to see what the day brings.
Normally, all three dogs get a treat and head back to bed while we get ready, but somehow two of them got shut out of the bedroom and remained in the living room while I took my shower. I heard whining at the door, and when I opened it to go into the living room, Fitz and Ollie made a beeline for the bed to join their brother Boo, who was buried under the covers, snoozing.
That was when I saw it.
Aha! I thought. Making a mess by the couch, I see. No wonder they hung back in the living room.
Not one of our boys wanted to go to the edge of the woods in this cold as they usually do for this kind of business. They’d all three peed and come straight back inside. But not one of them did the other emptying.
I grabbed a paper towel to clean it up, but when I got there, it wasn’t what I thought it was.
This dog mess was a frozen toad.
I picked it up to toss it back out the door and wondered whether it may still be alive. On closer inspection when I flipped it onto its back in my hand, I saw the poor creature struggling to breathe.
My Grandmother Jones would be rolling over in her grave, but I clasped the frigid little thing between my palms to warm it and soon felt a stirring. A muscle stretch. A pulse of life.
But how? I wondered. How had this frozen toad gotten into our house?
I’d brought the plants inside at lunchtime the previous day, ahead of the cold. Perhaps it could have come in that way, but it was far too cold to have slept in the heat of the house. I concluded that it must have been waiting by the door and jumped in when I’d taken the dogs outside.
As I put my socks on, though, it hit me – – the toad had been quite frozen, too stiff to move. There was no way it could have hopped twelve feet from the door to the corner of the couch.
What had happened?
After piecing the possibilities together, my husband and I believe that our toad-loving Fitz brought this little buddy inside and hopped up into his favorite living room resting place on the back of the couch with it, guarding it. That must be why he and Ollie hadn’t come back to bed – they’d been toad watching.
We slowly thawed it out, and I took it to work with me – and to the local coffee shop for a meeting – in a little plastic box with the lid half-cocked and taped shut. At lunchtime, I brought it back and released it right here on the farm so that it could return to its family. Not many Pike County toads can say they were brought back from death and taken out for a morning of work and coffee.
But Lazarus can (thanks to Glenda Funk for suggesting the name).
Back-Again Amphibian Tanka
In the house, a toad
Somehow, in from dark night’s cold
Lazarus, jump forth!
Resurrected Frozen Toad
Back-Again Amphibian
A.I.S., as defined on an episode of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, means ass in seat.
Common Threads 