Popcorn and Toads

 
                   

For as long as I can remember popcorn has been one of my favorite foods. For some people it invokes memories of watching a favorite film at a movie theater, or sitting in the stands rooting for your baseball team. But for me, popcorn will always be linked to the memories of my childhood and my pet toad oasis.  The memories will always be mixed.

But let me start from the beginning.  My brother was allergic to dogs and cats and so we couldn’t have pets.  As a curious young girl, I loved most living creatures, (well, except for spiders.)   We had a field behind our house where I spent hours  exploring.  I would venture out among the tall grasses and cattails, the milkweed and goldenrod, and lift up old boards, left behind by building contractors, and discover mother mice tending to their little pink babies.  Or I would find thumb-sized black beetles scurrying away from the exposure to light.  I discovered baby bunnies without mothers. And snakes.  Turtles.  Frogs.  And toads.  True toads, as they’re known in the biological realm, categorized in the family called Bufonidae.

As with most kids my age, I had a blue molded plastic swimming pool, with pictures of mermaids and dolphins on the bottom.  During the hot Michigan summer, I’d fill up the pool with frigid water from the hose, and splash around in it, de-pooling only as the sun was setting.  One day I had this idea that I’d like to have an aquarium, the type seen in pet stores, rectangular, glass, housing mice or frogs or snakes.  My parents quickly vetoed that idea.  I pleaded that I wanted pets and it wasn’t fair that my brother had allergies and that I couldn’t have a dog or a cat. Unmoved, the veto held. Discouraged, I sat in my pool, cool water to my waist, and pondered how I could turn my blue plastic swimming pool into the aquarium I wanted.

First, I drained the pool of its water.  Then I brought in pails and pails of dirt from the field.  It took me hours to fill the pool, but I was a girl with a plan and no heavy equipment.  Once I had what looked to be enough dirt, I took my hands and bulldozed some of the dirt into mounds, patted and smoothed them, and created valleys that could hold water.  I cracked small leafy branches from trees and stuck the stalks into the sandy mounds to create miniature shade trees for the future inhabitants of my oasis. 

The first time I picked up one such inhabitant to place into its new oasis, it peed on my hand.  I didn’t know a toad commonly did that but I quickly learned to pick the next, and the next, up by placing my thumb and index finger on either side of its billowy, squishing, sides.  I briefly wondered if the warts on its back would transfer to my skin but the adults I asked allayed my fears.  I still wondered.  And vowed that I would always pick the toad up “correctly” so that I wouldn’t have the toad pee on me again.  Pee = warts. 

I began collecting toads, placing them in the blue pool, sharing my extravagant island with them, one with palm trees and ponds, hills to climb, and pools to float in.  I didn’t get my glass aquarium but I finally had my pets.  I collected ten toads.  I gave each one a name.  They were named after my parents, my sisters, my brothers, and my friends.  Once I had this captivated pet posse, I took great care to feed them.  I fed them each morning and each evening by hunting and gathering long, fat earthworms pulled slowly from the ground, or shiny black beetles I found underneath boards or logs, and Daddy Longlegs crawling unknowingly around the pool.  I would bring my lunches out to sit by my pool pets, watching as they sat motionless, staring at the worm accordion across the sand.  In an instant, the toad would flick out its tongue, and the worm would now be squirming from either side of the toad’s mouth, the toad taking its front limbs and cramming the rest of the worm into its mouth.       

         

One day while watching over the oasis I had created, I dropped a piece of my popcorn into the toad domain.  I used the tip of a stick to poke at the piece of popcorn on the sand.  I poked it again.  I had dropped the piece of popcorn earlier to see if Mert (named after my father) would take it.  He hadn’t.  Apparently, the lifeless popcorn did not fool the toads. Didn’t they realize how good it was? The perfect crunchy, salty snack. Wanting the popcorn to appear alive, I moved it with the stick again, and then, just as quickly as it had landed on the ground, it was gone.  I dropped another piece onto the wet sand, gave it a slight tap, and as with the last piece, it disappeared.  Mert apparently had developed a taste for this flying popcorn, perhaps thinking it was a bug, or a worm.  He flicked his tongue out, the sticky tip snagging the popcorn. He likes it! What fun!  Mert went for it again, lurching forward with both tongue and head, and each piece of popcorn that I gently tapped disappeared.  I had created a veritable toad Garden of Eden, where life was good, and good food was provided. It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered, that not all good things last.

The following apocalyptic morning, all four feet of me stood at the edge of the pool and looked at what was floating in the oasis.  I couldn’t imagine what or who had done this.  My young heart hurt for them and wondered if they were in pain.  My tears, like an infinity pool, poured over my lower lids and splashed next to my floating friends.  My pets.  The bag of popcorn I had been carrying dropped out of my hand, hit the lip of the pool and exploded out of the bag like a fireworks display, showering the lifeless pool with popcorn. I began weeping out loud, no longer aware of anything else around me.  I dropped to my knees.  What was that smell?

Skunks maybe?  It was morning time and skunks, being nocturnal, were absent, but their essence lingered.  And their scat.   My parents and I speculated that, during the night, a skunk had dined on toad legs and had left their remaining bodies, with forelimbs attached, to drag themselves along what was once their oasis.  Or so I thought. 

I felt responsible for the toads’ demise.  After the ceremonial burial, and to manage my grief, I quickly vowed never to encase a pet again and paid homage to my ten toads by eating my popcorn, one piece at a time.  I would bring the popcorn bowl close to my face, stick my tongue out, and attach the tip of my tongue to a piece of popcorn.  Popcorn continues to be my favorite food, and as I hold the memories of my ten toads, I stick out my tongue to them.