Toad- Object Writing- Aug 20

Aug 21st, 2009 | By admin | Category: Daily Writing

There’s a lane way leading up to Wellington College private school, probably now paved, in those days it was just a dirt track, maybe just big enough for one car, but as kids we’d go and play down there after school. Either side of the lane was a ditch or a moat whatever you want to call it. It was full of stagnant water that had leached chemicals from the soil so it had an orangey glowing texture with crumbling walls of dirt that looked like the side of an apple crumble pie mum had just sliced up. Somewhere between the water and the undergrowth there were toads. I don’t recall where the myth began, but somewhere firmly anchored in my unconscious is the belief that if you touch a toad you’ll get warts – the medical or scientific validity of this now needs to be examined but then it was definitely a fear that loomed as large as the empire state building.

We’d see them every now and then,the squeaking pedals of our bikes would pause as we looked at one that was sitting on the path. We’d find a spindly stick and start prodding the thing. You could see its oily wart infested skin waiting to throw toxins at you, slimey creatures that would the hop off into the undergrowth that reaked of rotting vegetation. No fresh fields of mown grass here, just a dense thicket of confused branches beyond the ditch a veil of mystery it would be easy to lose a 7 year old child in.

One time as we rode we found a relative of the toad the plain old frog – it had a stick coming up out of its mouth – how it got there we don’t know but I remember that in an act of kindness we tried to remove it ; The internal organs of the creature slid out like the change in a cash register- scarily we stuffed them back in and let the creature get on with whatever life it had left- it still makes me turn inside out when I think about it….

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