A "TOADally" Terrifying Tale

I have a horrifying tale to tell....this is NOT for the faint of heart. If you scare easily or have any tendencies towards Ranidaphobia (aka you are a Frog-a-Phobe)....then turn back now. I am providing this disclaimer for your own protection. Should you choose not to heed the warning...then proceed at your own risk. And my sincere apologies to the Frog Queen for what I'm about to disclose.

Okay...so the set up first. We have 3 full bathrooms in our house and one of those is the 'back bathroom' or the 'pool bathroom'. It is named that because it is the bathroom that opens out onto the back patio/pool and is the one people use when we have parties or the kids are wet from swimming. It is also now affectionately referred to as 'Coventina's bathroom' because that is where we put my black kitty Coventina for the night and it has her litter box and bed in there. The kids and I never really utilize this bathroom for showers or anything else, but the hubby has been known to go back there on occasion.

So last night, I go in there with the cat sometime after midnight, to feed her and put her to bed for the night. And as I reach for her food bowl, my eye catches sight of something in the toilet, whose lid is left open much to my chagrin. When I turn to see what it is, I am greeted by a gigantic average sized green frog sitting there staring up at me with a grin. Naturally, it scares me and I run screaming out of the bathroom. I head straight to my bedroom, wake up the hubby and insist that he come remove the frog from the back toilet. My kids, come out of their rooms to see what the commotion is and quickly run to see the frog in the toilet, thereby scaring the frog causing him to jump down into the hole where he could not be seen....this according to my daughter. So the hubby, all bleary-eyed, looks around and can't see the frog, to which I tell him he must look in the hole. He explains that he is not going to be able to remove him from the hole since he can't see anything and decides the only thing to do is flush him down.

I am not keen on this approach for several reasons, first I think it's cruel to the poor frog, secondly the frog was in fact a very cute frog as frogs go....he was the perfect shade of light green like a tree frog with cute little spots. Although he did sit upright like a regular frog, not flat like the typical small tree frogs. And lastly, because I reason that flushing might not even solve the problem. To which the tired and irritable husband says it WILL solve it, the frog can't hold on, and he can go back to bed. So I relent, he flushes, and there is no sign of poor lil' froggie anywhere. But a thought occurs to me that maybe the frog has suction cups and can hang onto the side while the water rushes past him. Hmmmm....

Flash forward to this morning. The housekeeper is here, she has already cleaned the back bathroom with bleach etc. I have to use the bathroom and she is in mine, so I go to the back one. I get in there and shut the door and stare down at the toilet. It is completely empty, has been cleaned and I figure the frog is indeed long gone. Then I think about sitting down, but I decide I will just flush the toilet once for good measure first, and then I will feel safe. But just when I do so, that damn frog jumps out from the hole and scares me to death. I run out of the bathroom screaming. The kids are laughing and Cindy the housekeeper comes running. I tell her quickly of last night's frog story and we walk back to the bathroom together. We get there and the frog is no where in sight. We look around, but there are not too many places for him to hide. I tell her that he had hopped under the lip of the bowl, but he was so big I could see him, so he couldn't possibly be hiding there.

She reasons that although the space is very narrow under the lip...frogs can flatten themselves out. I say, "yeah, but that space is only about 1/2 in., there's no way." I ask her if the area under the lip is open or solid underneath and she isn't sure, neither am I. So I decide to find something like a stick that I can fish up under the lip and see if it's open or not. I find a floral stem laying nearby and decide it to be the perfect tool for such work. I hit the lip, smack it around making a bunch of noise, and no movement, no frog. But unable to get it up under the lip, I bend part of the stem up, and reach my hand down farther into the bowl to push that end up underneath...(which FYI is indeed open....narrow but open.) And just then, I apparently scared the frog, who exposed a creepy leg, which scared Cindy, who screamed and ran out the bathroom, thereby scaring me. However, I was holding onto the floral stem which was stuck under the lip and I was panicking because I didn't want to let go of the flower, but I really wanted to run in self preservation. So I dropped the flower where it was and fled out the door screaming as well.

The kids are in hysterics and Cindy and I are about to go into cardiac arrest. I decide to go back in and grab my flower and of course the frog cannot be seen. I snatch it out and sit in my office to collect my thoughts. I decide that it would be completely fair and just, to refrain from telling my husband that his lame, half-ass attempt last night to flush the frog did NOT work, just as I said it wouldn't. And then let him go back there to use that toilet in hopes the frog would jump up on his bare bum and scare the crap out of him. ( Well that sounds bad, but I don't mean literally.) Then I decide that maybe that is too harsh a punishment and the fear of reprisals overrides my vendetta plans.

So I call him instead, and berate him about the goings on at our house and insist he tell me what he plans to do now, or else I'm calling some Critter Control people. I tell him that he is extremely lucky that I did not sit down on that seat, because if that frog had jumped on me....I would have had the locks changed and served him with divorce papers. Of course just the visual of that event actually happening...proceeds to send him into fits of laughter, which he will pay for, mark my words. But anyway, we collectively decide that we must put a plunger in the hole and then use the stick to scare the frog out, at which point HE will have to grab him and evict him from his humble commode abode!

As I hang up the phone, I think how horrible it is that the frog as taken up residence in the toilet and that even if we do get him out of there, I will NEVER ever use that bathroom again as long as I live. This frog, he sits in my toilet and mocks me, he makes a fool of me by hiding when I try to show him to others. I think I heard him croak and he has now become the Menacing Toilet Toad from Hell. And then my paranoia really kicks into high gear, and I start wondering what other creepy crawlies might be hiding up there under the lips of the other toilets in the house. What if my most feared phobia of all, the dreaded SPIDER, is hiding up there in the dark. I actually begin to feel ill at this thought. And I wonder how long a human can survive without going to the bathroom and how a catheter might resolve this dilemma. I also think to myself how horrible it would have been if we hadn't discovered him, and some guest was at our house using the restroom and the frog jumped on them....Eeegads! There could have been a heart attack and a law suit.

And then it happened...my evil alter ego, 'Wendy the 'Warped and occasionally Wicked' Witch has a thought. She thinks the frog in the toilet could be a REALLY CREEPTASTIC special effect to have in place for this year's Halloween Party. Some poor unsuspecting soul would be getting the scare of their life....ha! ;o)
* * (The photos enclosed are not actual images of MY frog, I'm too afraid I will drop my camera if the frog jumps out of hiding, so I found these on the Internet. And I will update on the Frog debacle as the events unfold, but as of this writing....he is still in their cackling and making 'muwahahaha' sounds.) :o(