Doc and the Toad
Note: this essay originally appeared in Five Points, Volume 23, Number 1.
I’ve been thinking about the toad that I met on our deck several months ago because I have seen him there two or three times since our first meeting. As an adult, I don’t spend a lot of time with toads, though as a boy I was around them often. I remember them as being cranky and unpredictable. But this one seemed different. He seemed to be enjoying the deck, and when I bent down to take a closer look, I got the impression that he smiled and that he was happy to share this space with me. It was a warm day, but not too warm, and the warm wood felt good under my bare feet. To my mind, he felt the same way. The moment was in balance. Not too warm, not too cool, man and amphibian happily looking at one another, confident that the one would not harm the other. Of course, his tribe has been around for at least 200 million years, I read later, while mine just moved into the neighborhood 300,000 years ago. He had that look about him too. He could tell I was new to the planet, and what I got from those eyes — yellowy gold and deep — was tolerance. It was a new sensation for me, being tolerated by a toad on my deck.
The situation escalated, as the folks on cable news say, when Doc, our eleven-month-old Bichon Frisé, arrived on the scene. He was initially curious to know what I was doing on the deck on all fours, and for the first thirty seconds or so, he pursued that question with his typically clownish zeal. I was, after all, crawling on the deck, and he was right to feel that the times were out of joint. Something was clearly going on, and his first suspicion, as always, was that a treat might be involved. It was when that investigation came to a dead end and his attention began to wander to the back yard where the squirrels hold court that he saw the toad.
To call this moment a revelation for Doc would be to undersell it. He froze, just as he did when he saw the ocean for the first time. Too much incoming data for his processor to handle. He quickly glanced at me, buying some time, to make certain that we were of one mind about this new and inexplicable emergency. Because the toad was nearly the same color of the old spotted planks on the deck, and because the toad had adjusted his position slightly in the face of this new visitor, that part of the deck did seem to move just a bit. The whole scenario was unsettling, a kind of natural supernaturalism, as one old literary critic I used to read would put it.
If you panned out from this scene, as I’m doing now in my head, the whole set-up seems overly contrived and faintly absurd: a full-grown man on all fours, a Bichon puppy beside him trembling with ocean-sized emotions, and a toad, resolute, still, and seemingly unbothered by the two earthly creatures — because that is all the Bichon and I are, two earthly creatures just like the toad — that have gathered around him. As the months have passed, the toad has grown in my estimation, partly because the next time Doc encountered him, a day or two after this meeting, squat on the bed of pea gravel just off the deck, he sniffed him once and only once before heading out to the northwest corner of the yard where the squirrels convene and where Doc can always find a measure of trouble.
The toad had clearly had his way with Doc when they first met. Something important had passed quietly between them during that initial encounter, and being the only witness to this encounter, and feeling the compelling importance of the event, I feel equally compelled to record it as best I can. But I will tell you now that the event, like all events of this magnitude, is shrouded in mystery.
The toad puffed himself up a bit, and that impressed Doc who, you should know, is very easy to impress: a buzzing fly or an arm raised as if to throw a ball will also do the trick. But in this case, the toad worked a different magic on Doc. The toad simply settled into his position with authority and, as I said, seemed to grow slightly larger. Nothing grotesque or even measurable, and it was more a sense of amphibian confidence than anything else, but there the toad sat, golden-eyed, resolute, and sure of his position: a toad on a warm deck, camouflaged, on a warm day. The toad knew his place, he felt that he had an ancient deed to it, and he wasn’t budging. Why should he? He had the entire natural order on his side,and I envy him for what I took to be a clear case of self-knowledge. He was comfortable in his toad skin.
Doc’s next move was entirely unexpected, and maybe even miraculous if we hold to the idea that a miracle is a pleasant surprise we’d just as soon not try to explain. Doc abruptly lay down, flattened his lower jaw on the warm plank that he and the toad now shared, and stared into the toad’s face. And remember, I was on all fours not eighteen inches away, so was a reliable witness; I know what I saw. I’d estimate the distance between dog and toad snouts to be no more than four inches. If they were riding in an elevator, they would each feel the other had invaded their personal space.
Here is where my memory becomes fuzzy. I don’t remember exactly how long they held this pose. I was anxious because I knew that Doc could swiftly and without a shred of remorse swallow the toad whole before 1 could stop him. He is a quick little dog, though he is clumsy, and he is remorseless, even after one of his most ill-considered strikes. I knew the moral consequences of taking out the toad, even on such a beautiful day, weighed little in Doc’s considerations. But I didn’t move, and maybe the standoff, if that’s what it was, lasted twenty seconds. I was reminded of that famous photograph of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin taken in 1945 at the Yalta Conference — all three of them seemingly shoveled into their chairs, uncomfortable, but determined to see the process through to its end. I like to think of myself as Roosevelt, the toad as Churchill, and Doc as Stalin.
The toad and I were perfectly happy. We needed only to convince Doc to join us in our happiness. On that brilliantly sunny day, my alliance was with the toad.
After twenty seconds passed, Doc stood up, looked at me one more time, and saw that I had put my own predatory instincts to bed and was ready to let the toad sun himself on our deck without penalty or harassment. Still, he nudged the toad once with his snout, hopped off the deck, and shuffled out to where the squirrels play without his permission. The toad never moved, even when Doc bumped him.
I could draw out the morals of this tale as I have discovered them for myself over the intervening months. If I did that, I would soon tire of the project because I’m not naturally a moralist of any stripe. However, three strong nouns remain when I think of my encounter on the deck, three nouns that we tend to spoil by prefacing them with that bothersome qualifier, self. I am thinking of the words, knowledge, esteem, and confidence. Whenever I feel that I should say more, as I do now, I’ll remember Doc and the toad who settled their business, with me as a kind of marginal witness or notary, without speaking a word. I am certain, wordlessly certain, that both toad and dog knew what they were doing, felt good about themselves as they did it, and were confident about their chosen courses of action. Knowledge, esteem, confidence … they had these qualities in abundance, and they felt, as I do now, no need to preface them with that useless prefix, self.
Besides, our own little days are littered, if we are honest about it, with our own little Yalta’s, and we’d best save our words for them. Everything else is another act in the miracle play that is currently being staged right in front of us, and the only advice I’d give to you I constantly give to myself: we’d best take our seats and watch the play unfold with the joy that is rightfully ours. And don’t hold your applause until the end. Give it up whenever you feel like it because what the world needs now is … well, I’ll stop and let you sing the last word of that old Sixties song title.
