southern fried gal

Remember Todd? BBC fished this toad out of the pool and promptly named him Todd for some reason. He told me a very windy story about how he got lost from his family while playing hide and seek. It took me a while to convince him to let him go and I told him he would probably be back.

Next day we came outside and there were four toads in the pool. BBC was so excited that Todd found his family and brought them over for a swim. According to him it was his mom, dad, and brother. His dad seemed a little lazy because he was riding around on mom’s back. Ewww! BBC fished them all out and let them go on the back side of the yard.

DH came home later that evening and we were telling him about all the toads that we fished out. You can see our pool looked like a pond due to the monsoon season and not being able to keep it balanced. I think he thought I was nagging to get it cleaned up. Maybe I was. At any rate, I noticed a long black cord in the bottom of the deep end. I asked DH what he thought it was from – we figured it was something that blew in from one of the storms.

So skip ahead past a few very rainy days to last Friday. BBC and I ventured out in the afternoon to find SEVEN toads in the pool. This time I fished them out and put them out even farther in the yard thinking they for sure would not venture back in.

DH came home later in the day and went to clean out a skimmer. He squealed and jumped back when he opened it. (Sorry to bust you out, babe, but you did.) I came to investigate and found SEVEN toads in the skimmer. It looked like the same crew that I fished out earlier in the day.

At this point I was tired of fishing toads out of the pool so I dug around in the storage chest and found a mesh bag. I fished the toads out one by one and put them all in the bag. I made DH drive me over to one of the lakes. I got out and walked down the road with the toads in stow. A couple were walking ahead of me and the toads were being quite noisy. The man turned around I confessed to having a bag full of toads. I told him I was tired of fishing them out of the pool so I was relocating them to a nice new home. He thought I was a TOADal weirdo. I guess I am but I didn’t have the heart to dispose of them and did not want them in my pool again . I found a shallow area that fed into the lake. It looked like toad heaven. DH chuckled as he told me he thought they would just become a nice meal for a snake or turtle. At least that would serve a purpose. At any rate, I don’t expect to see them in my pool again.

At this point if you are easily grossed out OR if you plan to swim in our pool this summer you may want to stop reading here. But if you are a brave soul and must continue on, remember I warned you!

So on Saturday DH was out vacuuming the bottom of the pool. He tried to get the black cord up but it kept breaking. He thought it was weird but kept going until he finally got it all off the bottom of the pool. He also found a weird gel with black dots in the skimmer earlier and wasn’t sure what it was. Then he put two and two together to figure out that the black cord was toad eggs. Double ewww! Of course I came in and googled a toad’s life cycle (don’t you love google) and sure enough that is what it was. It made for an interesting science lesson for all of us.

Can you say TOADally DISGUSTING? Now I am TOADally glad I relocated those suckers!

On a bright note, the pool is blue again and the water is clear and beautiful. DH started balancing out this evening and I am certain we will be swimming by weekend. Thank the good Lord for chemicals! What plans do you have for the long weekend?