It is snow white and croaks obligingly when its back is stroked. As pets go it is most unusual.
It was midway through the exceptionally cold winter of 2026 that Julie came across the toad. Driven by hunger she had gone on a fishing expedition. Her parents not minding in the slightest that she was bunking off.
The toad had emerged from a hole in the river ice, undoing its camouflage. It seemed to be shivering, and Julie’s heart had welled with affection. Then she remembered the stories about such toads performing lucratively as circus acts.
She took home the toad, expecting to impress her family. But her parents said toad circus acts were now banned. What is more, such toads are inedible.
She kept the toad though.
i told Julie never to bring it to the chateau because Reymond would have no qualms in fashioning a pipe from its thawed body.
School was never a priority for the families of Strayleaf and Julie. The girls tacitly receiving permission to bunk off. In spite of keeping them company, i never thought of myself as bunking off school – so seldom did i attend in the first place!
We’d meet up half a mile downstream from the town’s old stone bridge, a stretch of river that looks very different in summer without the ice floes. Lichen, on exposed boulders, is pale green and tie-dyed like the girls’ baggy t-shirts.
We swam and smoked spliffs. Sometimes Mickey partook in the fun. He & i still like to recall those river excursions, our faces filling with retrospective beatitude. Blessed by our youth and the time to be lazy.
i think Julie must have had a thing about white animals. She had an albino donkey, which brayed with displeasure when anybody (save Julie) approached it. She indulged that donkey, allowing it to graze on prime pasture land.