Frogs and Dogs...

Olivia "supervising" as we run internet cable
to the Welcome Center

Monday was the beginning of 3 straight weeks without a day off- summer is officially here and we are getting ready for staff to arrive (tomorrow!) and soon after that, campers!

For now, Olivia and Griffin are helping me and the Lead Staff as we organize camp (see photo). Olivia has an opinion about everything and tends to micro manage, while Griffin prefers the technique of attempting to occupy exactly the same space as whomever he is following at the moment. Luckily I'm the boss and so my staff have to be nice to them (also, I have the nicest, most patient staff in the world), otherwise, I'm pretty sure one (probably both) of them would have been kicked by now.

As I am too busy to think of any cute stories from this week, here's one from last year.

Dogs and Frogs

Monday, June 21, 2010

11:30pm, last night. After a very long, exhausting first day of camp, I let the dogs out one last time before I could fall into bed. After a few minutes of hanging out and not going potty like mommy wanted, I went outside to drag them in.

As I walked outside, I must have spooked a very large (like the size of my fist) toad. When Olivia saw it, she became a wild animal hunter and attempted to go after it. Just as I grabbed her, shouting, "no!" Griffin pounced and had the entire thing in his mouth. The thought of one of my babies eating a giant toad is gross and awful, but I also remembered something about toads possibly being poisonous, so of course I was frantically trying to get it away from him. But less than 10 seconds of having it in his mouth, Griffin spit it out himself and then started foaming at the mouth.

Panicked, my first instinct was to run inside to do a quick google search. And yes, my memory was correct, some toads are poisonous. Some are not poisonous, but have really bitter skin to deter predators. Without actually seeing it, I didn't know which we were dealing with, so I dragged Griffin over to the hose and started flushing his mouth out like the website had said to do. Griffin thought we were playing and must not have ever seen a hose before, because he was happily biting at the water stream, flinging his giant, slobber-filled cheeks around, getting both of us completely wet.

There I was standing in the dark, yelling at Olivia to stop looking for the toad, yelling at Griffin to let me spray out his mouth, soaking wet, muddy, frantic, with two wet muddy dogs, hoping none of my staff could see or hear the ridiculousness. It might be funny if it wasn't such a typical experience in my life of insanity...

(epilogue- Griffin is fine, so I don't think it was the poison kind)