NEWS-LEADER (Springfield, Missouri) 09 January 11 Lethargic Christmas toad mysteriously arrives at perfect time (Amos Bridges)
Reporters at times have used these columns to talk about serious issues -- the right to vote, death, anonymous sources.
Others have used the space to wax philosophical about chi-weenie dogs or gargantuan pythons named Fluffy.
This story falls into the latter category. It concerns an unusual holiday visitor I've dubbed the Christmas toad.
The Christmas toad, appropriately enough, is an egg-sized brown toad that appeared in a potted spider plant in my living room a few weeks before Christmas.
How it got there is a mystery -- the plant sits on a wire stand about three feet above the floor (far beyond the leaping ability of any ordinary toad) and has never, to my knowledge, been left outside.
My best guess is that it was a stowaway in a bag of soil my fiancee used to re-pot several plants this summer. I've never heard the toad croak, so it could have been squatting silently in our midst for months, munching house flies and gnats.
The Christmas toad's discovery -- precipitated by the flooding of his home as my fiancee watered the plants -- could not have come at a better time. Our goldfish, El Guapo, made the trip to the big aquarium in the sky in October.
A calico runt, El Guapo ("the handsome one" was a birthday gift from my fiancee a few weeks after we started dating.
Unlike her two dogs, which I refuse to claim until forced to by marriage, Guapo was "our" fish, a relationship mascot.
Finding him belly up in the fish bowl, my fiancee warned, could be interpreted as a bad omen.
Plans for buying a new goldfish fell by the wayside with the arrival of the Christmas toad.
Unable to hibernate like other toads due to the warmer temperature indoors, the Christmas toad has dug in among the roots of the spider plant.
Less active than El Guapo -- the fish at least acted excited at feeding time -- the toad rarely moves more than the inch or two needed to snap up a mealworm. Despite online claims that toads only eat food that moves, the refrigerated larvae disappear quickly.
As for whether the Christmas toad will come to fill El Guapo's role as an emblem of domestic bliss, I can't yet say.
My fiancee and I are still arguing about what to name it.
Lethargic Christmas toad mysteriously arrives at perfect time