They say that touching a toad will give you warts. Or, at least, that’s what my mom would tell me when I went searching for them in our window wells.

It was one of the many things she tried to tell me to deter me from closely interacting with unwilling wildlife, anything from toads to possums to birds and even neighborhood cats. She told me scary stories of people getting rabies and things like tapeworm or fleas, but those buzzwords didn’t affect me at such a young age.

She probably also told me these things because, up until the age of eight, I was basically the angel of death for any living thing I came across that was smaller than my fist.

I don’t want to come across sounding like I was some kid who enjoyed torturing animals or anything- God, no. In fact, it was the complete opposite; I absolutely loved nature and animals. I had a habit of collecting bugs in my babysitter’s backyard and catching roly polies to keep in little styrofoam cups, and in our backyard was an empty lot full of trees and underbrush that i would visit all the time. Being a hands-on learning kind of kid, though, I just had a very hard time understanding the importance of respecting nature from afar, of “looking” but not “touching”.

I didn’t have a means of knowing when to stop messing with an animal if I was left to my devices, either. I have this distinct memory of myself at five years old holding a stick and looking down into a hole full of bees. One bad decision and a swollen liplater, I learned that it’s not a great idea to jam a stick into a hole full of bees. That was a lesson I learned very quickly.

The next lesson I would learn happened a few years later, at my aunt’s farm. Now, this farm was pretty small; other than a couple of horses the property was pretty devoid of any farm animals. The one thing it did have was a pond full of fish, and a lot of places to explore. I loved going down to the waterside of the pond and feeding the fat fish with bread crumbs, watching their little mouths breach the water before disappearing again under the surface.

This particular year, we were doing a family reunion of sorts at the farm. A lot of relatives that I had never met before were there, giving the normal story of holding their hands up and declaring, “I haven’t seen you since you were this big!” Not exactly relevant to the story, except for the fact that one of my distant uncles decided to give me a small plastic critter cage to hold bugs and sticks in-- much to the chagrin of my mother, who watched as I bounded out the door and began searching for any small creatures I could get my grubby little hands on.

After searching around the pond and failing at trying to catch minnows in the shallows, I went searching around the house in the window wells like I usually did at home. I was hoping I could find a poor little trapped animal, like a mouse or chipmunk or a stranded baby bird. I had these scenarios in my head where i saved these little things and they would immediately be my friend for helping them, as a token of thanks.

So after a bit of searching, I didn’t end up finding any such creatures. What I did find, however, was this big, fat, brown, warty toad, sitting at the bottom of the window well. Ignoring my mom’s advice of touching its warts, i scooped it up and put it right in the cage. I carried it around all day, and showed it to anyone who made even the slightest glance at me. I’m sure my distant family members loved having an eight-year-old shove a frightened toad into their faces while they ate their coleslaw!

I fell in love with that toad. I gave it a name (a stupid one, i’m sure) and talked to it, confided in it. I’m sure that toad was scared out of its goddamn mind, but i was having a great time with it. I watched it hop around in the grass, then picked it up again and held it in my hands for a while. I was proud of my new friend. Who cared about what my mom thought?? I wasn’t getting warts! What was the big deal?

Eventually, the day began to draw to a close. My mom and dad came over and said, “Okay, Caroline, time to put the toad back where you found it.” I am, of course, devastated by this news. I didn’t want to leave my friend behind. I devised a plan of stuffing it into my shirt when she wasn’t looking, but of course they caught on to that. So she instead followed me as we walked back to the pond.

Now, remember; the pond wasn’t where i originally found it. I found it in a dry window well. But, at that point, I still thought that the toad hadn’t chosen to be there; surely he was meant to go and swim in the pond, where he can be free! So that’s where we headed.

As i said goodbye on the shore of the pond one last time, i smiled at myself. I may have been giving up a friend, but at least i was putting him back where he belonged, where he’d be safe.

So, gently, with my parents watching, i softly threw the toad into the water, adding in a little “wheeeeeeeee” as it flew through the air.

Right before it hit the water, i saw something flicker at the top of the surface. Before i knew it, a fish the size of my forearm jumped up and swallowed the poor toad whole before disappearing back into the water.

We just stood there in shock. Then my mom and dad started laughing. I looked at them, appalled, then began to cry. We got into the car and drove home, and I sobbed for the whole two hour drive.

As we pulled into the driveway, my mom got out of the car and came around to my side of the vehicle. She took one of my hands and said, “Now honey, this is why you shouldn’t play with wildlife. Mother Nature knows what she’s doing, and that toad did, too.”

And my dad, as helpful as ever, added, “Yeah, and it would still be alive if you hadn’t picked it up from that window well, too.”