got to be ready for the consequences...

This little story is all true and truly a reminder to me to think before I do. Some neighbors gave Thomas and I an apple tree for our wedding.  Mary and Deb helped me plant it after our New Mexico reception.  We laid down some long grass around the watering hole to help protect the soil from drying out.  A couple weeks ago I noticed what looked like a hole in the grass.  I wasn't sure if it was created by an animal or from the soil settling funny around the roots.  It seemed odd, and whenever I watered, I tried to water right into the hole to flood it out.  Last weekend I noticed that there was a new hole!  This was not okay! I looked through some books that suggested that mice and voles will sometimes bed down around the roots of young trees and eat the bark.  This was a troubling thought!  Thomas suggested that it could be a snake hole or a rabbit hole or a gopher hole, but he had no idea what it was.  So I continued to water both holes.  Tuesday evening, while Thomas was at work, I went out to water the apple tree, and I poured that water right into the first hole.  The other hole seemed to be bubbling up or something, so I watered into it.  I realized at this point that I wasn't actually prepared to deal with what might come out of the hole.  If it was a snake, I would freak out!  I was starting to feel remorseful for having Thomas kill the Bull snake, as it might eat any mice or voles around - if that was what it was.  But the bubbling of that second hole was most definitely not a furry head, and I was already inching away when it burst forth from that hole and flopped right up against the mesh fence (for deer protection).  It was A TOAD!!! I apologized to the toad for startling it and told him he could stay.  I imagine this might be the toad responsible for laying eggs in the puddle at the end of our road a couple weeks back.  And I recognized it from hanging around the trailer when the guys were rerouting the drain for the washing machine.  And if I am not mistaken, it scared me into a tree just on Saturday morning when I was weeding in the garden, and it hopped right through me. I lucked out.  I can handle a toad, especially if he eats spiders and flies and mosquitoes and other bugs.  But let that be a lesson to me anyhow...