Note: I wrote this piece in October 2014 and posted it to my Facebook page. However, I thought it would make a dandy addition to the mental musings found here at Dances With Bass, and more importantly, be entertaining to all three subscribers I’ve accumulated. Okay, I lied. I have just two subscribers. But those two people love the shit out of Dances With Bass, and that’s good enough for me.

Everyone, I’d like you to meet J. Thurston Kughen, Esq.

J. Thurston Kughen, Esq., meet everyone. Don’t be afraid. Most of them don’t bite. (Some of them, however, would boil you in a pot and enjoy you with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, so don’t get cocky.)

Now that the formalities have been dispensed with, you’ve likely realized that Thurston is a toad. Yes, I know toads are part of the Anura (frog) family, though I do not know to which of the 4,800 known subspecies Thurston belongs and I don’t have a herpetologist handy…so we’ll just settle on generically calling him a “toad.” Okay?

At any rate, Charlotte and I first noticed Thurston’s presence on the trim surrounding the side door to our garage about a week ago. Because Thurston is a really inactive young chap (and quite possibly because our eyesight here at The Kughen Home for the Mentally Divergent ain’t what it used to be) we both thought he was a wasp’s nest. It seemed logical. Wasps often build their little mud forts in out-of-the-way places such as this and when viewed from our kitchen window, Thurston looked like a tiny wasp’s nest in the making. That all changed Monday night when I was standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, and I noticed that the wasp’s nest was moving.

I retrieved my handy flashlight that I keep nearby just for strange wildlife sightings such as this and quickly determined that what we thought was a mud hut for wasps really was a living amphibian.

Now, you are probably thinking, “hmmm….the top edge of a 7-foot door frame exposed to brutal sunlight every evening from the west would be a poor choice of hangouts for a toad.” Us, too! We speculated far and wide about how poor Thurston came to be there and whether we should attempt a rescue.

After another day passed and Thurston had yet to move, we decided that he most certainly was not there by choice and was indeed in need of a rescue attempt. So, Tuesday night, I trotted outside with a piece of cardboard, coaxed Mr. Thurston onto the cardboard and lowered him gently to safety where he immediately took cover under a large hosta plant. I was quite certain he gave me a thankful wink and wry smile, but that could just be my medication talking.

At any rate, I went back inside feeling good about myself and how I’d thoughtfully rescued the little chap —intentionally doing so in the cool and black of the evening so that he could slip off to wherever toads go at night and hopefully avoid any predatory interest. Then we pretty much forgot about our new amphibian friend.

That is until a few nights later while again doing the dishes,  I spotted Thurston staring at me from his perch atop our garage door. Now, you might be asking yourself how I know for sure that this toad is the same chap known to me as J. Thurston? You might be thinking that all toads look alike, but you’d be wrong. Thurston has a distinctive sneer that I could pick out of a lineup of toads. Trust me.

Anyway, because toads have sticky pads on their feet, I know they can climb. However, we were left wondering why he would he climb seven feet straight up and perch himself in such a precarious position? More importantly, why in Sam Hill would he do it twice?

Thurston stayed with us for several days without moving. For a time, I thought perhaps he’d expired right there on that tiny ledge, his dead eyes forever staring into our modest kitchen. And for all I know, he really was dead. I didn’t hold a tiny mirror up to his nose to verify that he’s still breathing or anything, but…

After several days, we looked out one evening to discover that Thurston had vanished. I went outside to look for evidence of his demise (e.g. a toad corpse in the flower bed below the kitchen window) but all that was left were a few spots where his sticky toes had pulled off some specks of dirt on that little ledge, leaving what amounted to be toad footy prints.

I expect that we shall never see his like again…