toads Archives - Memos and Mirth

Dead Toads…

April 2, 2009

I came home yesterday and two of my four toads were dead.

All the plants in the tank were dead too. I have no idea what happened, but I was over it. I phoned Petsmart and told them that they were taking my remaining frogs back. I then chucked everything in the tank.

Pfft.

By the time I got Petsmart I was pretty cranky. I didn’t buy a fish net and had to pluck the dead toads out of the tank with my hands. Let’s think about that for a second. Dead toad. Bare hands. Dis-gusting.

And yes, handling a dead toad is worse than handling a dead fish… I could still feel the slime as I drove to the store…

The Petsmart manager was nice. He could see that I was annoyed and grossed out, so he didn’t bitch at me for killing two animals. He also, somehow, managed to sell me an allegedly hardier pet. We’ll see how this goes…

Yes. It was gross.¹

¹ I bleached my hands afterward. And no, that picture is not of a dead toad. I wouldn’t do that to you…

Life

Goodbye Mealworms

March 17, 2009

I knew I had a problem the second I opened my bedroom door – my room stank of swamp. It smelled like I had a bog body under my bed. Uck.

The nast came from my toad tank. Apparently my toads prefer live food. So if a cricket or meal worm dies before the toads get to it, then it just rots in the tank. Delcious. I know. I was so thrilled to learn this firsthand…

I wasn’t prepared to deal with rotting bugs, so I went to the fresh part of my room¹ and finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point.

Finishing a non-textbook felt good. I think it’s a 1L rarity. Woop! I was now ready to reclaim my room’s freshness.

I pumped the tank, did a water change, lit coconut incense and about a dozen scented candles. I also vacuumed and disinfected all surfaces. My room currently has more chemical smells than Lady Gaga’s hair salon.

I did have one problem:

The 14-year-old sales rep at Petsmart was mistaken – my toads do not eat mealworms. At all. Half of the uneaten-grossness in the tank was worms. Fail.

But I still had so many left! What to do?

After thinking about it for a few minutes I realized: “Wait, meal worms are …WORMS! And I don’t care about worms!”

Chuck, Flush, Holla! Problem solved!²

Now that I have a newly cleaned and freshened room, I can finally concentrate on those fee committee reports…

¹my bed, which is by the diffusers…
² I didn’t actually flush the worms… chucked them outside. It’s warm enough…and the bats that live in our attic are looking famished…