Toad At My Door

For the last several evenings there has been a visitor at the threshold of my kitchen door. He stays all night as if waiting for something or someone. 

I don’t know if toads sleep sitting up, haven’t had cause to study them. The last time I saw one all stretched out was in my high school biology class.

Actually, it may have been its first cousin, but who could tell the difference?

My several dogs come in and go out through the kitchen door.  It’s not the only door providing an exit, but they are forbidden to go out my front entryway unescorted and the garage has lost its appeal except for those few days that I enter the kitchen with bags of groceries.

Toads have an agenda that I do not understand.  They are territorial perhaps?

But if that is the case, where has this one been?  I only remember seeing it just recently.  Did it live its formative years in the woods behind the fence?  Was it carried in my yard in on a recent wave of unending rain? I didn’t get the memo. Regardless of how it got here, he is staying put.

But wait, I used to have a front door variety. Last year, I remember my walkway was under the vigil of a toad.  It was smaller. Perhaps the morph corn snake made its acquaintance.

Maybe it’s a messenger.  I believe in animal messengers. My mother sends messages via blue birds. Just before her passing in 1988, she began to call me “Bluebird”.

What a curiosity! She was not particularly fond of anything feathered, as a matter of record, her passion was elephants.  I inherited more than 700 of them…

The connection between mother and me has survived her physical death and I absolutely depend on her spirit in times of turmoil.  The bluebird, in its infinite varieties, has appeared and her sweet song has calmed my anxiousness during the crisis of my own struggles with marriage, motherhood and the tremendous personal loss of my father.

What is this connection? I know I may be over analyzing the perceived relationship that we are having, but there’s a reason for his presence.

He is always facing the door.  Recently, he has been carefully poised on the raised threshold, and when the door is open, he could hop right in, but he remains motionless.  My dogs each stop and greet him, nudge at him, cajole him and wait for him to engage in some form of play, but he is not interested.

He waits for me.   As dawn is just breaking, I remove the outside water dish and bring it inside for a thorough wash and refill, he stays.

He can’t be found during the daylight.  That’s his well- earned time of repose after the long night’s vigil. I suppose he moves to the patio’s edge and disappears into the lushness of the overgrown jasmine or perhaps into the once manicured center planting of azaleas and southern pine.  I used to have a back yard that looked like a back yard, but now it’s a dog version of the Talladega racetrack. 

I gave up and gave in. 

The Native American Animal totem honors the frog (close enough).  It’s symbolic of the cleansing.  Sprit of water, you may call upon it for emotional release.  It may require you to renew your perspective or vision. It is associated with “rebirth” and transformation. Being active at night, it is a favorite animal of the arts of the dark and witchcraft. By extension, the totem animal is connected to the mysteries and familiarity of the unknown.  THANK YOU INTERNET.

Wow, that’s a little too much information…

But it fits my current circumstances for I am in flux and wide open to possibilities beyond the realm of the realm.

While I mull this over, re chew it, spit it out and observe, I will leave you with another possibility.

Remember the fairytale about the Frog Prince?  It’s a leap of faith, but I’ll freshen my lipstick just in case…