“Be bigger than your fears, opponents, and challenges,” says a toad enlarging himself, appearing too big to consume. 

It’s a mystery where he’s been and where he’ll go. For now, with his legs swatted beside him and his plump belly tracing the blades of grass, I know that he’s here. Such a figure of independence; no place he goes is an accident. A miniscule amphibian, a creature most have forgotten, displays a perfect, unapologetic confidence. 

I can’t remember the first moment I knew I loved frogs and toads. I do know, however, it wasn’t on a television screen. The frogs I grew fond of weren’t puppets singing in a musical or princes and waitresses falling into a fabricated romance. The toads I found were crouching docile in a hole. The frogs were paddling across the water with their stretched webbed toes. They were real. 

Maybe it was the frog suctioned to my exterior window, waiting in the rain for me to notice him. Clicking my finger near his tan underside, I enjoyed the millimeter of glass that gave us the closeness we desired and the freedom we needed. Maybe it was the toad squirming under a bush, inviting me to stain the knees of my jeans as I pawed for his midsection. Maybe it was the frog I swaddled in my palm two inches from my nose. For a long time, I thought my neckless friend couldn't see me; I was wrong. 

Bracing my scaly friends in my glasslike hands, I look at their tiny faces through a peep-hole between my thumbs. If you’ve ever stared into the eyes of a frog or toad, you know they are incapable of anger. They only know struggle and contentment. However strange it sounds, I choose to believe that despite the struggle, between my hands, they know what humanity feels like.

Some suggest frogs and toads are skittish, fearful creatures. They’re wrong. It's actually quite the opposite. They know safety. Where there are frogs, there aren’t snakes. Frogs and toads are strong. They’re witty. They’re content. They know where there is peace. They know where there is comfort. They know where they can be alive.

Somehow in this big world, the frogs and toads are among us, offering their croaks. They know us. Perhaps they’ve known us all along. We can delight in them. They live the life only a frog or toad could. This is why they are loved; because they do what frogs and toads do. Because they’re not sorry. Because in a world that changes, they stay green. 

We are bigger than our fears, opponents, and challenges. We are independent. We are confident. We could go anywhere, but we chose to stay here. While we search and try to find the toads and frogs to love them, the world is trying to find us. The real us. The us that knows peace and comfort. The us that isn’t afraid to be alive. We aren’t sorry. We won’t change, because there is something too perfect about exactly who we are. 

We’ll stay green, because we are the frogs and toads.