John Ward accidently carried a toad in his trainer from the UK to China ...
John has the kind of job where he has to be ready to travel at short notice. The call came to leap on a plane to China, so out came the suitcase, "The last thing I packed were my trainers which I normally keep in the garage. I kick them off there and leave them to fester. I snatched them up, threw them in the top of the suitcase. When I got to Bejing, I opened my suitcase and a toad popped out of my trainer, a live toad! I supppose it had crawled into my trainer in the garage. It had survived a 9 hour flight in who knows what sort or temperatures and there it was - a big smile on its face…"
Not to put too fine a point on it, the discovery made John jump a mile. "I sort of parked the toad in the corner of the room and trapped it in the trainer, using the other shoe." When John returned from work, the trainers had been put in the wardrobe by the maid, but in spite of a thorough search of the room, the toad had vanished.
Concerned for the toad's well-being, and re-instatement of his only link with home, John called the floor manager of the hotel. Explaining the problem wasn't easy. The floor manager's English was as spasmodic as John’s Mandarin. An attempt to draw the toad sent the man backing out of John’s room.
However, the next day, John found the toad crawling around the skirting boards of his room. Toads need sustenance; John bent his mind to tempting menus, "I wasn’t really sure what toads ate, so I got it up a salami and salad sandwich from the restaurant…" John stuffed this into the airline overnight bag in which the toad had set up camp, thoughtfully adding some moist cotton wool to keep the him comfortable.
On the afternoon of the third day, the toad ceased to move. John was worried. Eventually the toad revived, "Whether it was the salami, I don’t know, but I set it free in this exclusive villa compound in northern Bejing, with an ornamental lake and rocks. He seemed quite happy - he still had that smile that toads have."
Very heaven for a toad.
