Purple Rose or Ben the Toad

Okay, okay, okay. I know it has been a very long time since I have blogged. Well, our old computer died on us, and we just got a new one. So now I think you are all caught up on what has been going on here. But now for the "Toad Saga" are you ready?

So here's what happened. Justin went to Mexico for the weekend and I painted the girls room. On Saturday night, I was finished with the purple so I went outside to wash off the paint brush. When I moved over to the light on the porch, I saw something move on the rocks. At first, I thought it was a mouse, then said to myself "No way!!! Is that a toad?" . When I got closer, I realized it was actually a toad!!! And it was HUGE!!! The size of a softball. So then I first ran in to get my camera to take a picture without getting too close. My solution to get rid of the ugly thing was to spray it with the hose, but it just jumped down the side of my house. I didn't want the thing to get into my backyard with Lucie, so I called my dad to come and get the thing at 9:45 at night.

So then my dad came and captured the darn thing. It did put up quite a fight, though. The kids wanted to go with my dad to let the poor thing go around the corner, so I let them. They came back about a minute later. The dang thing had jumped out of the bucket in the back of the truck and jumped into a small hole that led him between the bed liner and the truck itself. I couldn't believe it. Didn't he want to be free? So my mom and dad spent the next half hour trying to get the thing out. The only thing to do was to grab it, but the kids were too scared to grab the thing. So we decided to leave it until the next morning to see if it left on its own. But it hadn't, so we had to wait until after church. That night we thought of a name for it. If it was a boy, it was Ben the Toad. If it was a girl, Purple Rose.

So after church we went over to see if it was still there, and it was. So we kept trying to get Rhett to stick his hand in there with a glove on to grab the dang thing. But he just couldn't do it. As we were trying to figure something else to do, Rhett started to tell his friend who lived a couple of houses down from my parents all about the toad. So I went over to see if her kids would be willing to touch a toad, and it turned out all of them would. So a couple of her kids were taking turns trying to get the toad. She took a turn, but when the toad moved, she realized she couldn't do it. Her husband even tried, but the way the toad was positioned, you couldn't make a fist and pull the thing out. You know, the whole monkey with the nut in the jar thing? So after an agonizing hour in the heat, my friend stepped up to the plate and reached in, grabbed a leg and gave it to my mom, while she reached in again to grab the other leg. And voila!!! The toad was free!!! You think that would be the end, wouldn't you?

Well, then my friend took the toad over to her house to show her daughter and husband the illusive toad. When she got into her garage, the toad jumped out of the bucket and jumped under her car. So then the kids had to get the toad to come out from underneath the car. That took another few minutes or so. Then it got loose on her lawn where her husband took pictures and video of the toad that just didn't want to be free. After that, we put the toad in a bin with a lid on it so it couldn't get away again to save it for Justin to see. After Justin got home he saw it and my dad took the kids to go take it back to the wild. So farewell, Purple Rose or Ben the Toad whichever is the appropriate name for you. May you never come back to my yard again. My crickets aren't that good.