Fire-Belly Toad Fiasco

Without my knowledge Atley answered an ad from a lady who needed someone to take her two fire-belly toads. He wrote something like, "My two sons would love to have your toads. Love, Melisa"  Several hours later I received a call that I could pick up the toads as soon as possible, of course I was clueless about what the lady was talking about.  Long story short, last Monday the boys became the proud papas of 2 Fire-Belly Toads and a carton of live crickets. They named their toads Bob McDonnell and Paul Ryan.

Our cat Lucy was not thrilled with the new addition and spent many hours swatting at the aquarium and the cricket keeper.

So, I suppose it should not have been a surprise when I returned from running errands, less than 24 hours after the toads arrival, that Lucy had some how managed to knock the aquarium off of the counter and the toxic toads were missing, along with 10 live crickets.  The boys were at school at the time and we frantically searched for the missing creatures, finally finding one toad hiding under the hutch and covered in cat fur.  Atley was devestated to discover that the toad was missing, especially when Nash convinced him that said toad was most certainly Atley's (aka Paul Ryan) and not his own.  As if they could actually tell the two politicians apart. Two days passed and still no sign of the missing toad.  Scott and I had to go to the pet store to buy some more crickets to feed to the one remaining toad.  As luck would have it, the Fire-Belly Toads were on sale and we decided to attempt the old-switch-a-roo.  We bought a replacement toad. The plan was to lie to the children, which totally worked by the way and I highly recommend it. When we returned home Lucy had once again attacked the aquarium, but this time as I bent down to take a picture of the wreckage as documentation for the boys, I noticed 2 little toad legs sticking out of the dishwasher.

We captured him before he could escape. We once again have 2 toads that have already lost their excitement to the boys and the cat and are now completely my responsibility.