MY FRIEND THE TOAD 



By DAN BEARD 



It has been my custom ever since my boy- 

 hood days to make careful water-color draw- 

 ings of the different creatures I meet in the 

 woods, and the accompanying illustration is a 

 leaf from my sketch book and represents a 

 Pike County toad. 



It is a red toad, and Pliny says that a bone 

 from the right side of a red toad administered 

 to a person will make them hate you ; but a 

 bone taken from the left side will instill into 

 the person to whom it is administered most 

 ardent love. However, the reader need not 

 worry. I am not going to administer either 

 of these bones to him, for I would not sac- 

 rifice the life of the toad to gain the reader's 

 enmity and I will trust to luck to gain his 

 affections. 



This particular toad lives under the door- 

 sill of the gallery to my log house. He is 

 there yet, and has been there for a number of 

 years. In the evening he comes out and hops 

 around the kitchen door and catches the in- 

 sects that are attracted by the crumbs swept 

 from the kitchen door. He is a temperate 

 toad, of good habits and well behaved, but I 

 am sorry to say that, when these sketches 

 were made he was in a state of beastly intoxi- 

 cation. However, this was not altogether the 

 fault of the toad. You will observe several 

 unfinished pencil drawings. These are unfin- 

 ished because the toad hopped away before 

 they could be colored up and the details put 

 in. This happened a number of times, and as 

 I was very anxious to get a careful drawing 

 of the warty little rascal and at the same time 

 did not want to kill him to keep him quiet, at 

 the suggestion of one of the woodsmen I ad- 

 ministered to him a spoonful of milk flavored 

 with very ardent spirits. It was a cruel thing 

 to do, but not so cruel as maiming or killing 

 the creature, because he did get sober. The 

 effect of the liquor can be seen from the atti- 

 tudes in this leaf of the sketch book; but, 

 after rolling around in the most comical way 

 he settled down and gave me all the time nec- 

 essary to make a careful water-color portrait. 

 Then he gradually sobered up and hopped 

 away, a sadder and a wiser toad. 



Since that time he has refrained, so far as I 

 know, from indulging in intoxicants. 



This last summer, Mr. Fred Vreeland, the 

 electrician, botanist, naturalist and sportsman, 

 photographed a toad while singing. The toad 

 was sitting on a stone on the edge of Big 

 Tink Pond and while he focused the camera 

 I mimicked the note of the toad. Instantly 

 the pond minstrel drew in two or three 

 breaths, then his throat swelled up into a ball 

 much larger than his head, and he gave forth 

 that half burr and half whistle note with 

 which we are all familiar; but it is not always 

 necessary to imitate the toad to make him 

 sing, for the one under my kitchen would 

 come hopping out in the evening and sit on 

 the door-sill and every time my little baby 

 daughter gurgled with infantile glee the toad 

 would answer with a burr-r-r, greatly to the 

 entertainment of my guests and the delight of 

 the baby. 



I have always understood that toads were 

 great gluttons, and so I took a can of great, 

 fat, Long Island angle worms, and, one at a 

 time, threw them in front of this toad, that 

 he might prove the capacity of his race for 

 this sort of food ; but after he had eaten a 

 dozen or so he blinked his eyes two or three 

 times, turned his back on a nice, squirming 

 worm as big as a Lamprey eel, and hopped 

 away in a dignified manner to his retreat un- 

 der the sill. 



I have been very much interested in no- 

 ticing how much attached a toad becomes to 

 a certain locality. This Pike County toad has 

 lived under the door-sill for a number of 

 years, although it must go to a considerable 

 distance to the lake every breeding season, 

 while another toad in my back-yard in Flush- 

 ing lived several years in a discarded flower 

 pot, to enter which he had to make a perpen- 

 dicular hop of about six inches and then creep 

 into a hole which was made in the earth in 

 the flower pot. 



I would like to hear of any of the readers 

 of Recreation who ever kept a record of any 

 kind regarding the age or approximate age of 

 toads or frogs. I kept a frog about three 

 years at one time, and he died from an acci- 

 dent. As far as I know, everything tends to 

 the supposition that these creatures live in- 

 definitely until some accident kills them. 



S^T 8 " 



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