Toads

Now viewing Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988) with Daniel, a.k.a. Toad. He likes movies with “little animals.” We rotate through various David Attenborough productions. The reptiles-and-amphibians series (Life in Cold Blood) has been an especial hit. Hence my search for more toad-content. Cane Toads, dir. by Mark Lewis, is basically what an animal doc would be if helmed by Errol Morris. (I guess Morris has made a couple of near-animal docs: Gates of Heaven, and one-third of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.) The toad movie has talking heads (politicians, scientists), historical “re-enactments,” dramatizations of humans’ encounters with toads, and sentimental old Queenslanders on their back lawns waxing lyrical and tearful about the cane toad’s essential decency.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The next stop on my fantasy reading tour is The Hobbit, to which I’m returning after some decades. The first 120 pp. have been pretty much as I remember them, almost line-for-line. Disappointing, in a way. But then comes the “Beorn” chapter with quite the wittiest passage so far:

“If you must know more [said Gandalf], his name is Beorn. He is very strong, and he is a skin-changer.”

“What! a furrier, a man that calls rabbits conies, when he doesn’t turn their skins into squirrels?” asked Bilbo.

“Good gracious heavens, no, no, NO, NO!” said Gandalf. “Don’t be a fool Mr. Baggins if you can help it … He is a skin-changer. He changes his skin: sometimes he is a huge black bear, sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard …

There is a fearful hour – 9:30pm, more or less – when, his brother having dozed off, Daniel – normally so sweet, so docile – a virtual Dr. Henry Jekyll – transforms into someone (or something) more like the wicked Mr. Edward Hyde.

That hour is now upon us.