Fatter Fat Toad

I've been meaning for a while to post about a little friend that lives under our porch that Pat and I affectionately call Fatter Fat Toad because, well, she's HUGE! I first found Fatter Fat Toad last year one night when I was coming home from work. I work the evening shift so I get home around midnight and my husband leaves the porch light on for me. This is probably why she hung around our house. The porch light attracts all kinds of tasty bugs. As I pulled around the house I saw a large rock and got out of the car to check it out because more often than not large rocks end up being animals. Yep, she was a huge toad that was about the size of a baseball and she did not want to give up her prime hunting spot. She continued to hang out around our porch throughout the summer and quite often when found her (like in the picture above) hunkered down under the bleeding heart waiting for a hapless insect. She even let me feed her worms from my worm composter. Fatter Fat Toad was our good luck charm omen and I hoped that she found a good place to stay for the winter. Turns out she did.
This is a picture my husband took one spring morning. He emailed me that Fatter Fat was a awake and sure enough when I got home I saw a scuffled mud hole under the porch steps where she had slept. It was only about an inch or so under the soil at best. I remember slipping on the porch steps when we had the huge blizzard as the damn things were a sheet of ice. It's amazing that she slept there the entire winter.

She looks a little less fatter in this photo as her little flaps of skin sag over her little elbows but soon there would be a bounty of insects for her consumption and also the worms from my compost bin. But this was the last we saw of Fatter Fat Toad. I've yet to spot her so far and it's been a dryer summer for the most part than last year. I miss seeing her but I'm holding out hope that she might come back to the porch to hibernate.
I had a volunteer potato come up near the porch and I decided to cultivate it in hopes of a few potatoes, what the heck? A few days ago I was messing around it watering and decided to see if I had any baby potatoes yet for maybe a salad or something. Well, I found no potatoes but I did find a baby, toad that is. Could this be the next generation of Fatter Fat Toad?

He (she?) was teeny tiny and fast! I was able to take a few shots of him before dumping him back onto the potato plant he was guarding so well. I took a few shots of him on one of my packages in the mail just so you could see his diminutive size against a stamp.

He then decided that that was quite enough documentation thank you and proceeded to spring across my cutting mat that I had laid out on the table!

I hope he tells Fatter Fat Toad to come back for a visit.