The country life for me

The koi finds a friend

Please, don't tell it that it's its own self; I haven't let on yet.

Koi, like goldfish, are highly sociable creatures and don't like being alone in their own pond in quarantine very much, although this one seems to be starting to get used to the fact and the new rhythm of life, including 30 minute to one hour Nifrupirinol bath treatments in the afternoon. We are staving off the Ziploc bag in the freezer option as long as we can continue to give the antibiotics I can get in the store and the sea-salt regime a chance of working. It isn't eating anymore, aside from the perhaps accidental ingestion of a koi stick the day before yesterday, when I put it in the clear salad bowl of Nifurpirinol solution for the first time, which isn't so great a sign.

Neither were the enlarged blood vessels around its right eye yesterday. They don't look much worse, and possibly a little better today.

Word must be getting out, however, that I am something of an animal recovery and treatment center because the neighbor turned up at the gate with her 3-year-old and her 5-year-old niece in tow earlier than I expected them to come for a swim.

"Ah, on a eu un changement du programme?" I called from where I was peering into the quarantine basin. They were to have taken a postprandial nap before coming for a tea time swim.

"Non, on a trouvé un bébé crapeau dans le bac à sable, et on a pensé l'amener ici."

Why, merci beaucoup!

In short, they found a baby toad cowering in a corner of the sandbox, and they thought they'd bring it to me. Well, as it happens, I have a toad house or two available, with piscine, in the border. I invited them in through the gate, and led the girls, followed by my neighbor, to the very spot, an empty orange juice bottle filled with water for the toad pool in hand. This, I handed to her small daughter, standing next to me in her ruffle-bottom swimsuit, and asked if she would like to fill the toad pool herself before we released the bébé crapeau into it.

She began to show advanced stages of doubt and trepidation, standing there clutching the one liter -- plus 15cl gratuit! -- orange juice bottle against her bare belly, eyebrows drawing together and lowering several centimeters as her lower lip protruded worrisomely, and then quivered. She cast her glance demurely down to the right and refused all further action or offer of assistance.

"Tu veux que je le fais moi?" I asked, certain of failure. She raised her eyes and their brows a millimeter in my direction, and I detected the faintest nod. Oui. "D'accord, je le ferai." I reached for the bottle, which she released, and poured it carefully into the dish. I pointed to the clay flower pots, decorated with stones and sunk into the dirt on their sides below the yew tree. Chez Eugénie G, half-way house to toads not inclined to stick around.

"Ca c'est l'une des maisons. L'autre," I pointed to where the second one was, behind a hosta, "est là." She nodded, her blond hair drawn up into a ponytail leaving wisps of honey colored hair along her brow and round cheeks. Her mother smiled, amused by the seriousness of the event, and handed me the sandbox toys that contained the small toad. I opened them carefully to reveal a bébé crapeau, standing on its hind legs, eager to find la sortie. I lowered it to the dish and it hopped directly into the shallow water and on past it to crouch at the base of the Falstaff rose and clematis ('Niobe'?).

"Tu le vois, Lili?" asked her mother, as the older cousin looked on, silently. She nodded.

"Il y a quelque chose d'autre de l'autre côté," said Lili, her nickname. I peered, trying to understand to which of the many things possible she might most likely be referring. The holly berries, an eye-catching shade of a dusty violet-blue, seemed most likely. She pointed toward them. "Les choses bleues," said Lili. The holly berries. I reached and broke a bunch off.

"Ce sont les fruits du houx," I told her.

"Ca ne se mange pas," added her mother. No, I confirmed, we don't eat them. They would taste very bitter and give us a stomach ache. Of course, I am not sure of that, but it works with preschoolers.

"Ils sont les graines de la plante," I explained, "pour que le houx puisse en faire d'autres houx." The girls nodded together, ready for lycée. "Tu veux les prendre?" I asked the older one, who reached out and took the little bunch of violet-blue fruits. "Ils ne te feront pas de mal si tu ne les manges pas."

I briefly considered a job as a teacher, or a gouvernante for a wealthy family with vast gardens, and exceedingly well-behaved children, interested in nature, literature and foreign languages, art and alpine sports. Perhaps yoga in the shrubbery.

We looked at the frogs in the bassin, and I accompanied them to the gate to go home for their nap so they could come back and enjoy our pool.

Ah, the joys of country village living, such as they are. Second only to the joys of marriage and your child being "admis" by the Académie pour son Bac.

Time to go remove the pool summer cover and vacuum it.
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Evening. Ennui.

Night falls early

L'ennui. Ou la fatigue. Ou la déprime. De l'amour. Ou saisonnière. Ou la grippe tout court.

Who knows.

I must report on Eugénie G. Toad. Eugénie is not in her toad house. She has not been seen since the first day, when she settled into a burrow and began to tunnel. I thought the hole meant she was there, but, being unable to refrain from being certain, I removed the dry linden leaves, reached in and felt the inside of the tunnel with my fingers. I was rather afraid to stick Eugénie in the eye, since they dig backwards, pushing the dirt up and out, but I felt nothing but the end of the tunnel, somewhat abruptly. Eugénie had gone.

Was ittoo hard to tunnel in that location, beneath the yew? Was it not to her liking? Whatever the reason, she is wherever she is, I'm unreasonably sad about it, and the several toadlets I removed from the skimmers and the pool, preparing to close it for the winter, didn't stay long in the toad house either. I added, by the way, another one. Both are vacant. They don't even seem very interested in the shallow pool I made for them to sit in.

In the days that I waited and hoped to see Eugénie again, witnessing the massacre of the toads trying to cross the road that cuts across the forest at the center of the boucle de la Seine, I joined Froglife, and I wrote to ask them who might be organizing here in France to do something with amphibians other than eat them.

For the record, we do not eat toads.

Also for the record, I do not eat frogs.

I received a reply from Lucy in the UK (I love that name), who offered to put me in touch with Ninon, near Rambouillet. Lucy told me that they use a system of fences along the road side and pitfall traps to collect the toads, adding that "this system is very popular in Europe but for some reason is not widely used here." This year, according to Lucy, the group in Rambouillet "helped 4,000 toads across the road!"

I love the exclamation point. I love the enthusiasm for the toad lives saved for another season, or at least until they migrate again.

Now, to contact Ninon and see who they are, what they are doing, and how I can set up a similar "toads on roads" effort here in the boucle. One reason they don't use the fencing might be the expense in setting it up and maintaining it. I read about that.

As long as Eugénie is safe out there. That's all that matters.

Peut-être je la reverrai au printemps. Peut-être.

Maybe I will carve my pumpkins tomorrow, even though Sam -- 18 now -- is in Amsterdam, and definitely not trick-or-treating (which they now do here in France, too). I still believe in Halloween, even if most of the candy of this season has been "dedicated and prayed over by witches".

Sounds good to this croan.

Just kidding you. Bwa-cacklecacklecacklecakle!!!! Funny, though, that the original blog post, The Danger of Celebrating Halloween: Spiritual Life in God, by guest writer Kimberly Daniels on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network, has been taken down from their site.

Does this mean someone over there at CBN still believes in America as we know it and has a little sense in their head? Evil children, trick-or-treating in America's exurbs with the full approval and participation of their parents. Good God. What is America coming to when parents encourage their children to participate in the work of Satan and to consume the sweets that will lead them to His ways?

I mean think about it. All the shelves in school and public libraries we would have to empty of picture books with reference to this Satanic American holiday! And -- save us! -- "The Peanuts" It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! All the DVDs and VHS tapes that would have to be confiscated, reburned and taped over with Pat Robertson's choice of the best fundamentalist American Christian sermons of all time! And, once, invited by a family with whom my young son and I were acquainted, I attended a Halloween party for families at The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in Greenwich, CT with quarterback Steve Young's parents present, actually condoning this holiday. Think of it, Steve Young and his wife later defied the Mormon church, actively opposing California's Prop 8 on October 31, 2008!

See? It's Halloween at fault. Now, that is ghoulish. What were the Mormons thinking?

Croak.
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Rain and Eugénie digs a hole

Rain

I just came back up from the pool pump, turning it back on for the first time since I found Eugénie G. Toad waiting for a miracle or the end of her forces, clutching the handle of the pool filter basket for all she was worth. The presence of the lid pressing on her back must have helped. Wedged into that small space of light and air and hope, she had only to wait. I wonder, did the energetic and cheerful little frog below her annoy her, or distract her from her distress?

She was like a triathlete, running as long as the finish line remained before her, collapsing as soon as she was released from her predicament, the lid no longer there to hold her in place. I watched her head drop, her hind legs loose their grip and slip, hanging below her thick toad body, pulling her down, down, down. I took hold of her; it was the only kind thing to do. She'd had it.

Yesterday, I helped her take possession of her new home, somewhat against her will. I, convinced she found safety with me and didn't want to leave me. She? How can I know? She is a toad. I know my own thoughts, but I cannot know hers. I can see that she holds onto me, that she struggles against my putting her down, returns to my hand, to any part of me in reach rather than stay on the ground, but what is she thinking? We look at each other in wordless communication. I talk to her. She can hear me, unless she is deaf, which she might be after some 30 meters, shooting through the pipes of the pool. But does she trust me? Am I safety? Does she feel now that she needs me? These are human responses, but we look at our pets -- unless we're talking about cats, of which I have two, have had many more, and can definitely say that they would prefer that I not believe this of them --, and we are certain that they respond just like we do. And maybe Eugénie did. I read this in the toad biology section on Toadilytoad.com:

Toads are extrememly [sic] smart and toads are much more human like [sic] in personality, but these are just generalizations since I have known smart frogs and not so smart toads, as well as toads with no personality and frogs who had alot [sic] of personality.

I stopped to see if I could see Eugénie, like I surprised myself and did yesterday afternoon, when I broke down once and lifted the leaves and brushed carefully at the dirt, suddenly feeling her cold flesh under my fingertips. Startled, I pulled my hand back and then lowered my head, tilted to the side to be able to see inside her house. Two big round eyes gazed back at me.

"Excuse-moi, Eugénie... je suis désolée, je ne voulais pas --" I fumbled, reaching for the leaves to return her to the protection and quiet of her nest in the dirt under the yew, by the clematis, the holly and the Falstaff rose.

I intended to leave her alone, let her be a toad, free of me (unless she came looking for me. One day, I'd open the French door to go out and see her sitting there, waiting to be with me. I'd think how I had nearly stepped on her and wish to install a tiny bell for Eugénie G.), but there I was, heading across the terrace under a heavy rain, to kneel on the brick ledge along the planting bed. Once again, I removed the large, dry linden leaves from inside her flower pot house. Very carefully, I placed my fingers where she had been yesterday and felt an Eugénie-sized depression in the soil. I pressed a little harder, brushing the soil ever so gingerly, but there was no cool flesh, only a hole. Eugénie, the real toad that she is, is doing the very toady thing of making her own hibernaculum, leading from the house I made her.

Hoping not to be considered impossibly intrusive, the very worst sort of human neighbor a toad could have, I followed the hole as far as I could with my fingers, but I never felt her cold skin. The hole leads under the roots, towards the center of the yew, either where she was sitting, staying warm, or which she had left, heading out to explore her surroundings at the top of the garden.

In case she could hear me, I said, "Salut, Eugénie. Je reviendrai te voir encore."
....

Chez Eugénie G. Toad

Home, Sweet Home

Eugénie Grandet Toad
found (again) 19 October 2009

"Mais tu ne peux pas le mettre dehors la nuit!" dit-il.

"Pourquoi pas? Il a passé toutes les nuits de sa vie dehors jusqu'au présent," répondit-elle.

"Mais il ne sait peut-être pas creuser son lit par nuit." But maybe he doesn't know how to burrow his bed at night. Lame. I don't think they follow a plan (just like our workers) or need to see much at all to dig a little hole into which to bury themselves. "Et," he added gamely, "il fait froid."

"Mais il s'est rechauffé et en tout cas, il a l'habitude." In the space of two hours, we had gone from "Mais tu ne vas pas garder ça dans la maison, non?" to "But you can't put it out at night!" It wasn't worth arguing. I didn't really want to stick him outside in the dark, either. Besides, another friend sent a link for making your own toad house and village. I wanted to do that.

"Bon, d'accord." He spent the whole time I set the table, made dinner and we ate nestled under my sweater on my chest.

"He's a living brooch! I've seen those. Usually they're tiny lizards, but, hey, you're a trend-setter," said my sister on Facebook.

He got pretty active towards the end of dinner and wanted to crawl over me. I went to find a cardboard box and stuck a cushion cover from IKEA I have never used in the bottom and set the cardboard protection from the printer that came in the box in one end. It would offer him a little space. I wet some paper towel and set that in, too, in case he needed some moisture. After the dishes, I took him upstairs and sat the box next to the bed. Audouin was already there, reading in bed, magnifying glasses perched on his nose. It gives him this old but pert look.

"C'est qu -- oh! Mais non! Tu ne vas pas le mettre dans notre chambre?" Mais, why not? "Mets le carton plus loin au moins. Si tu te lèves dans la nuit, tu vac marcher sur lui."

Like I'm stupid or something.

"Ici je peux voir facilement s'il va bien." He returned to his book. This is when you know you have indeed been married seven years. It's very nice. The disagreements end much sooner, before they become full-blown arguments. To the death. Almost. Or, as good as.

In the morning, I found the box next to my side of the bed, uncrushed. I had not gotten up and stepped on it during the night. Such a relief. I lifted the lid, took out the towel I had put over him in his corner, where he had climbed right onto the cardboard protection like it was a little toad apartment, and peered in. He was very still. I touched him. He was very cold. I looked closer. I didn't see much to indicate breathing. I picked him up, very carefully. His left eye slid back around to look at me. He was alive. I put him back in and went back to sleep for another hour.

There would be time enough to attend to his house and wait for the plumber after Sam and Audouin left.

But first, there was a more pressing question: is he a toad, or is he really a frog. And, if he is a toad, is he a he, or is he really a she?

This was actually too easy to determine. First, it is most definitely a toad, and the toadiest of toads, one of the ones that cannot be called a frog: being a Bufo of the family bufonidae, the "true toads". One look at the photo to the right (from Wikipedia), and there was no doubt about what I had rescued, a Fowler's Toad. The Bufo bufo, or the common frog, is very common in our part of Europe. So are Bufo fowleri.

The next part struck me as being a little more challenging. I mean, would I recognize toad testicles? How big are they? Do they stay up inside the toad and descend as required?

As it turns out, I had no need of testicles to make my identification. At Toadilytoad.com I read:

One of the most frequently asked questions we get from visitors to toadilytoads.com is how to determine the sex of a toad or frog. I am going to give you a basic idea but I think it is important to understand that there can be many exceptions to this and that it's more of a generalization than a rule.

One of the easiest species to differentiate between male and female is bufo americanus (American toad). The rules here apply to other species like bufo fowleri and bufo woodhousei, as well (Fowler's and Woodhouse). However, some of this doesn't seem to help in differentiating between male and female Rococos (bufo paracnemis), so again, this is more of a generalization than a rule.

Bufo Americanus males have one of the most beautiful songs in all of nature. Their shrill call is easy to identify and can be heard only briefly each year during mating season. I would also like to point out that there has always appeared to be less [sic] males than females. Here on toadilytoads.com, we get many emails asking us if we can identify the sex and species of a particular toad and most often, it's a female regardless of what species it is. I don't know if anyone has factual data on this, but this has been my observation. Also, I might add that I can usually tell on first site if the toad is male or female without much investigation. I guess 27 years of experience makes it easy.

Italics mine.

Since I had found the toad, it was almost surely a female. I read on and looked at the toad. It was bumpier than smooth (female), it had an "even-colored", or light, throat as opposed to a dark throat (female), it was largely silent (female), it's arms appears more slender, like the one in the photo of a female (female), and it had no nuptial pads for hanging onto the female during mating (female). It was, therefore, not Trevor T. but Eugénie G., who will zoom about the countryside not in her Tin Lizzey (T. Get it?), but in her 2CV, the top rolled back and secured with rubber bands.

Another scene from our life in the provinces.

Avant Yard. In her post, Diane Rixon suggests a flower pot, half-buried in the soft dirt. She covered hers with smooth pebbles, like river stones, because she's "into a more naturalistic look, something I think might be more likely to attract wildlife, too." I gave it some consideration and decided not to drive to Truffaut for a bag of pebbles. Instead, I covered Eugénie G back up to protect her from Wisp's needle-sharp claws and headed out to find a flower pot and some stones.

For once, not throwing something away came in handy. There was the tin rimmed (the tin gets in here, after all) terra cotta pot from IKEA out of which the bottom fell, making it perfect, since the missing bottom makes the perfect escape hatch in the event of aggression. Now, for the stones. I looked around. There was a ton of chips of chaux and bits of brick and concrete, but these broke the sharpness rule for basic toad safety. I remembered the stone gravel in the courtyard next to the old school across the street that they are transforming into three apartments, where we parked one of our cars until the work started. Then, I remembered that there is some in front of the neighbors' house. I didn't need much, and he gets excited about the same kind of idiosyncratic (to put it nicely) projects I do. I headed over and scooped up some gravel in lovely ocher and grays, beige and reds and headed in to look for the super glue. The plumber arrived while I was painstakingly gluing small stones to the pot.

It's okay. He appreciates the same sort of projects. That's why he's our plumber still after 7 years. That, and we like him. He always stops and takes the time to appreciate the fish in the basin, offer advice and praise. I told him the story and showed Eugénie G to him.

"Il est dans le carton, le crapeau?" I nodded. He peered in and made the appropriate noises of appreciation for this perfect specimen of nature. I covered her back up, and we headed out to the furnace in the garage.

By the time I finished gluing stones, the bits of dry grass and bay laurel leaves to the pot, my fingertipss were coated in super glue. I was a little nervous about picking up Eugénie, in case I'd never be able to put her back down again. I could just hear Audouin, "Mais on ne va pas vivre avec un crapeau collé à ta main!"

Especially not once I failed to nourish it sufficiently and it -- . Never mind.

I heard Baccarat bark. I suspected she had gotten out of the garden when the plumber came, but I figured it would serve her right to have a good scare and think twice about flying out the next time. I detached my fingers from the pot, pushed my chair back and headed out to the gate. There was my neighbor, from whose little lot in front of their garden, I had filched some stone gravel.

"J'espère que ça ira mais j'ai trouvé Baccarat dans la rue et je l'ai mise dans le jardin. Elle a failli se faire écrasée par une voiture, en plus." I looked at Baccarat. She had gotten the fright, but I wasn't certain we could count on her to even realize it. Cars are not toys, Bacs. She had her baby in the carrier and her almost 5-year-old was gamboling up the railings along the street, at the school bus stop. We chatted. I remembered I hadn't covered the cardboard box again. I needed to cut her off shorter than usual. I explained the concept of the toad house I was making in 10 words or fewer and promised to tell her husband about them so he could make a toad village with their son in the spring.

Wisp was up on the ironing board, licking her paws.

I glanced over at the table. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Eugénie was in her corner, unsnacked upon. Besides, had Wisp tried that, she'd be howling from the poison Eugénie could unleash from her glands.

I picked up the stone-covered pot, went and got a spade and installed the house under the yew by the clematis and the Falstaff rose bush. It seemed fitting to move Eugénie Grandet in by Falstaff. Come spring, she will have the pink and white tulips, then the deep violet clematis and violet-red Falstaff English roses with the blue holly berries, followed by the flowers of the Hosta. Then, I went and fetched Eugénie. She flattened her cold belly to my hand and wrapped her fingers and toes around mine, the pad of my hand. I carried her out to her new home. She was not eager to quit me, but I insisted.

She is now contently burrowed into the damp soil and leaves of her toad house.

Next, a hibernaculum.


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