Eulogy for Todd

text and photos : Norma A. Hubbard  (October 2015)

I first met Todd when he entered our entrance way of our house. I wasn’t sure how he got in, but I put on my garden gloves and put him in my garden. He didn’t argue, actually he was quite cooperative. In the several weeks I knew him, he managed to come in two more times, but generally he just hung around the door on the patio stones near some planters. He was there so often, I even joked with Ron, “Do you think he is really a prince and he is waiting for kiss?” On the morning of his death, he was near the back porch and he had looked up at me when I called out to the rabbit. I saw him looking, so greeted him, too, “Hello Todd” – I am sure he knew I was talking to him. Todd, as you might have guessed, was a toad.

Later that day it was not Todd, but a Common Garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) that greeted me at the back door. I don’t know where my dislike of snakes comes from, perhaps due to older brothers trying to throw them at me when I was young, but I don’t like them. This snake was about two feet (60 cm) but they can grow to over four feet (137cm) – and these snakes can bite; however these snakes are not poisonous, and most snakes don’t want to bite us. In fact, they would rather avoid us. Garter snakes are active during our summer days, but they hibernate in the winter (October to April) in various holes, borrows, or under rocks.

Snakes have incredible sense of smell, which is how I think this snake found Todd. Garter snakes are always flicking their forked tongues out to collect chemicals, or scents in the air, like the smell of a toad. The snake then retracts the tongue into a space on the roof of its mouth called the Jacobson’s organ to identify mate or meal. In the spring, Common Garter snakes release pheromones to attract a mate and to my displeasure, snakes can have litters of up to 80 snakes! Yuck. The snake at my back door was right where Todd usually sat. When I chased him away – not difficult since he obviously did not want to be near me anymore than I wanted to be near him – he took the path that, in hindsight, Todd must have taken to the back porch area. The snake went under the porch and came out where Todd had been sitting that very morning. I did not see Todd.

In fact, I thought the snake was trying to dig into the dirt to get away from me, so you can imagine my horror when the snake came up with Todd in his mouth! I tried to get him to drop my new friend (or something like that), but it was incredible that a snake can lift and move with the weight of a toad. I chased it, then I saw the blood, and I knew Todd was dead. Within minutes, that snake had eaten Todd.

I know snakes need to eat and now sadly I also know that they are able to eat rather large toads (along with fish and worms) but I still wish he hadn’t eaten the one toad I actually liked.

Nature is not always pretty, and as much as I dislike snakes, especially this one, I didn’t kill it, or harm it. However, I did ask Ron to take that fat-bellied snake away from the house – and I hope he never returns. Good-bye Todd.

Source :  www.canadiangeographic.ca/kids