Unwanted bed partner

I keep telling everyone who will listen (and even those who wont, or can't) that I've been sleeping with a toad. I've even renamed my parents storage/utility room the "toad room." But while lookng for pictures for this post, I realized I've been wrong. I've been sleeping with a cricket frog.

Don't get me wrong. I love frogs, toads, salamanders, etc. I've spent hours listening to their calls, walking in the woods to identify them and am genuinely concerned for their health and welfare. I just don't want them in my bedroom, you know what I mean?

My father was taken to the hospital in an ambulance three days ago, after suffering a fall and being unable to get up. I don't think we'll ever get the whole story about it, my mother isn't very lucid. I'm not sure who called the ambulance, but am grateful to whomever did. I got a call from one of their neighbors as I was on my way out there for the day and have been here ever since. The hospital scene is grim, but improving slightly every day.

It helps to have a sense of humor. Fortunately, my sisters and I do. My brother - not so much. When we got to the house, I had Large with me. We put food in the fridge, mapquested where we thought we were going and, tried to lock the front door and went to the hospital. We got there at 1:30. Many things transpired and we came back to my parents house at 11 p.m. The front door was open.

My parents live on top of the tallest sand dune in their sparsely populated community of huge homes. The literally live in the wild. We've seen fox, unbelievable quantities of dragon flies, deer, raccoon, you name it. The front door was open, had been open for some time, inviting the wilderness in. The sheer volume of bugs swarming the house was astounding. Large and I put on Deep Woods Off just to sleep. He slept while my mom and I had a glass of wine.

I found some flying insect Raid, held my breath and sprayed. Instead of just killing brain cells, I decided to jump on the fireplace ledge, spray near the track lights that were attracting thousands of flies and mosquitoes and hop down again. It was the hopping down that did me in. I was tired after an emotionally exhausting day. I looked through my reading lens on my trifocal and misjudged the distance. Should have looked through the distance lens. Landed on my good foot and proceeded to sprain that ankle. Actually, I'm not sure what I did. Every toe is bruised from 1/2 an inch below the base to the second knuckle, the inside of the foot is bruised, particularly around the ankle. The outside of the foot has a dark purple bruise, there are a few bruises across the top of the ankle tendon and I have several on the leg. The whole foot has a purple-ish, greenish hue. It's very ugly.

And it hurt. So much that I threw up. I iced it until about 1 in the morning and went to bed, using my father's cane to get around. I got up at 1:30 to use the bathroom and saw this frog/toad hopping down the hallway carpet. I tried to catch him, but was not fast enough on one sprained and one previously broken ankle. My attempts to shoe him out the back door made him flop right into the room where we were sleeping and under the dresser. All night long I heard, or imagined I hear, flopping noises. At 3, I saw him flop across my mother's chinese carpet to the light of the computer. Or it could have been a second frog, or a third or a 20th. Who knows?

Irrationally terrified of this "toad", I didn't sleep well. Probably wouldn't have anyway, but the prospect of being flopped to death by a frantic frog was enough to kick the insomnia in. By the end of the night I heard, or imagined I heard, frogs all over the room. Except that I thought they were toads.

Now I have real guilt. I looked for it in the morning, as did Large. And then Mark and Medium looked when they got here to bring me clothes and pick up large. Cricket frogs are fairly rare, although probably not as rare here in the wilderness as they are in suburbia. And here I've been unable to rescue one when I had it in my sight.

At least it wasn't snake.