A Beastly Tale

This is the story of what happened to me some time ago, after I finished my nightly surfing (which means going to bed in the wee small hours as usual *g*). Believe me, it is all true. For me at the time it was something of a nightmare, but looking back at it now I guess it was rather funny. To appreciate it's full impact on me at the time though, you have to realise that I live on my own in a big, creaky house.....

After I finished surfing, I eventually went to bed about 4.30 am, and was just falling asleep when I noticed one of my cats staring intently at the radiator, and then she ran over there and pawed at something. *Uh oh*.

I put the light on and went to look at what it was. There was a large 'thing' under the radiator - since I was half asleep, I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but I noticed some blood on the carpet a few feet away. *Uh oh again*.

Then I finally figured out what it was when it started moving. It was a *VERY* large toad, lying on its back, with one leg ripped off and bleeding. Aaaaaaaaagh.

I went out of the room to see if I could find something to catch it with and came back empty-handed to find that it was gone. *Oh my god, where is it?*

Then I saw it. It was flopping around on the other side of the room trying to find a dark corner. It was very large and slimy and *oozing* icky looking stuff. And those horrible beady little eyes kept staring at me......... *Oh shit, what do I do now?*

There was just no way I was going to be able to pick it up and get rid of it. I tried to persuade the cats to take it away again, but they'd completely lost interest in it. They were getting more enjoyment from watching me panic. *Bloody typical*.

I thought about taking the coward's way out and sleeping in the spare bedroom. No such luck. I went in there to find a large spider crawling around the ceiling, and I'm very arachnophobic. *Damn, now what?*

In the end, I got the wastepaper basket and tipped it up over the toad to stop it moving around. But the basket moved when the toad tried to escape. Thoughts of being attacked by a killer basket flashed through my head. *this is ridiculous* I thought, *I can not be scared of a waste bin*. So I got the largest, heaviest book I could find and used it to weigh down the basket. *I'll get my neighbour to sort this out for me in the afternoon*.

I eventually crawled into bed, absolutely exhausted after the adreniline rush. *oh well, at least it's over for now, I can finally get some sleep*. Hah! That's when I heard it - the scraping noises coming from inside the basket, and they went on and on and on all night long.... So I lay there, terrified, covered in sweat, and completely unable to sleep.

I eventually dozed off and I think I got about a couple of hours sleep. Fortunately a couple from work popped round in the afternoon to drop off a video, so they got rid of the - by now very dead - toad for me.

What a night.