The Adventures of Ichabod and Mrs. Toad (Part 2) - Great Escapes and Easy Infiltrations

Previously on Ichabod and Mrs. Toad: Mrs. Toad is swiped off the streets of Shapingba district. After a torturous cab ride in the pocket of a giant, she settles into her new pot for the night. Little does the giant know, she's already plotting her freedom. If you haven't read Part 1, you might want to go back and read that now. It sows the seeds of resentment necessary to understand Mrs. Toad's next move.

Day one, I've survived the journey to my new prison. The walls are cold and slick but the top of my cage appears to be loose. Yes, I've been rattling it for the last half an hour which for some reason upset the giant. He lifted the lid and yelled at me but I puffed up really big and flung mud everywhere until he went back to bed. Tomorrow....

The next morning, I jumped out of bed like an excited kid on Christmas and ran over to Mrs. Toad sitting on my desk. Unfortunately, I didn't know she was sleeping and if you think I'M grumpy when I get woken up unexpectedly, you haven't seen Mrs. Toad. I clearly startled her from her slumber because she immediately puffed up to almost twice her original size and let out the most high-pitched, girly croak I've ever heard. She overreacted so much, in fact, that she flipped right over onto her back and spent a solid minute trying to right herself. 

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mrs. Toad (Part 1) - First Impressions

Hello once again to my friends across the world! Sincere apologies that I haven't posted in such a long time, but this last month has been a whirlwind of traveling and work and it's been hard to keep my head above water.

"I'm not here by choice"

"This isn't a real flower?"

But! One thing that's really helped keep me sane for the last week or so are my two new roommates. Say hello to my new pet toad and....um.....beetle? I'm honestly not sure what this thing is suffice to say it's a pretty cool bug that broke into my apartment one day. The toad still does not have a real name but I've thrown around Mrs. Toad, Buffy (Bufo.....get it bio lovers?), and Guanyin after the Chinese goddess. She (I also arbitrarily decided it was a she after googling 'how to sex a toad' got really iffy really fast) is kind of cranky. I mean, to be fair, I'd be upset too if some giant picked me up off the street and decided to enslave me in a tupperware container for his pleasure.

But she's learning to love me. The same cannot be said for the bug, Ichabod, who was already in the dog house for showing up in my apartment uninvited and then announcing his presence by flying at my face only seconds after I walked in the door. I'm trying to teach him how to make better first impressions but he usually ends up just biting me when I hold him... Anyway, these two have worked their way into my daily routine now and the story of how we came to cohabitate is worth telling.

For the sake of clarity, let me start from the beginning and tell you all how I came to be in such great company...