The Dog, the Toad, and the Blue Moon

Wild thing .... you make my heart sing.


He has stripes, like a tiger, and a pit bull’s head. He is top heavy with dainty hips that do not quite square with his formidable chest. He lives in the culvert between our yard and the wash. He comes to the fountain in front of our porch and stands in it while he gulps snootfulls of water. When he is done he scans the yard, dripping overflow from his loose boxer lips. He has “posted up near water” as my son says. 

The culvert serves a gateway between our yard and the wild wash. Javelina, bobcats, and coyotes prowl out there. The dog seems conversant with all of the traffic and divides his time between here and there, the other side, the wild, hungry, prickly desert side. He is smart and has chosen a place cool enough during the hot afternoons this time of year. I am not sure what he does when it rains, which it has, often this year. How he copes is a mystery.

It is August in Tucson, so the dog has a cohort of flies that follow him. Tears leave a wet mucous trail down his muzzle. He looks sad. Some of my neighbors call him dangerous and say that something should be done. Call Animal Control they say. We can’t have a beast living so close they say. Don’t feed him. Make him go away.

He comes from mystery and darkness and he makes us uncomfortable, on edge, a little too alert. 

I take him food. The dog keeps his distance. He trots away, looking over his powerful shoulder, fixes his gaze, issues a baritone growl, and flaps his lips with a half bark if I get too close.       

At first, he lurked in the shadow of the culvert until I left. Then he came out and inhaled the kibble. After a week or so, he waited for me in front of the culvert, but would lower his big head and strike his low tone when I got too close. After another week or so I would coax him out and he would let me stand next to the food. Then he took it from my hand. His lips are sloppy with drool but soft. He can find the tiniest crumb of food and lift it off my hand without the slightest suggestion of a tooth. 

                                    ***

The toad meets me at night in August, at the height of the monsoon season. We usually meet when it rains the warm rain of summer, when palo verde beetles, gila monsters, and exquisitely beautiful, medicinal, and poisonous flowers like datura or Angel's Trumpets thrive. 

He is huge by toad standards, as big as both of my hands cupped together. Sonoran toads secrete a toxin that can be hallucinogenic or deadly. I don't imbibe or aspire to a taste of the chemical coating.

Sometimes he appears outside my kitchen window. Other times he is on the deck next the hot tub. This year he is in the front yard. 

The toad digs his way out of the earth, from a year in shadows underground to eat, bleat, and mate. He and I regard each other on sultry nights with my thoughts on the coincidence of our meeting, every year, like this. 

This year, he took up temporary residence in the fountain. He bleated like a baby, like a lost sheep, all night, calling for the mate that never came. I listened to him and drank a cold beer.  

I had to wonder what it is like to be underground for most of a life, to rise to the drum beat of thunder and raindrops, to migrate to water with hope – if a toad can feel hope – that a mate will follow suit and join in the gluttonous orgy. 

I had to wonder too what it must be like to stay underground and never climb up into the risk of terrible solitude overlain with a cellular craving for sex. 

                                              ***

The blue moon of August rises red over the rocks. I am camping at City of Rocks State Park near Mimbres, New Mexico. I have all night and a flask of tequila. The moon could have its way with me after the third shot or so. It calls to something long hidden, something hard to coax out of hiding, some wild part of myself long since exiled. Only the moon and wild things speak the language of this shadow dweller. This missing part is not one to follow rules, not one to be at home in polite society, nor is it beholden to the easy way. It takes a rockier path. It has been hiding in a culvert, been waiting deep under ground, and it lives for the rare intersection of time, place, and lesson. 

The moon splits my heart, and the river of pain that is living flows into me. It is time, again, this time at age 56, to be born into the rest of my life, to listen to something long ago forgotten. 

            

                                         ***

There are times, like this August, when I just want to bag it, cash in my chips, check out. It is the time of year when life is most active in the desert, but also the time when it is least bearable. It smells like life and like death. 

I give up summer freedom to return to teaching. I feel that I will never achieve what I want to achieve, that I did not use my time well and that now it is time again to work for my keep, to do the bidding of others. 

Nights can be so hot and humid that the swamp cooler does nothing more than moisten the already dense air. I get older in August. 

I am grateful for the dog, the toad, and the moon. They pull me back down to this earth, this lovely, painful planet where I still have things to do, demons to meet, wild delights of which to partake.