Nature happened in my frog tank

We have frogs.  Ok, fire-bellied toads.  Ok, we HAD frogs.
Sashimi came home from school yesterday afternoon and I had to have a talk with him. I looked him straight in the eyes and said "Sashimi, Flippy and Floppy died.  When I looked for them in their tank this morning, they were dead."
Sashimi started to well up with tears, and he asked "Did you not feed them?"
Me: Well, frogs don't live as long as cats (we also have a cat) or as long as people.  When they get old, their bodies just stop working and they die.
Sashimi: Oh.  So Flippy and Floppy were old?
Me: Well, they were old for frogs.
Sashimi: Oh.  Ok.  I gotta go fix my spy phone now. 

And with that, he ran off to his room to fix his imaginary spy phone with his imaginary spy tools that his NON-imaginary friend Jake gave him. (Being a child spy is all very complicated.  Did you know that they can only eat Turkey on Thanksgiving because otherwise they could be too tired to do their spy missions?  True story.)

Anyway, Sashimi took the news of his frogs' demise much better than I expected.  Which was good.  Because the whole story was a load of crap.

Here is what really happened:

While having tea and cake with my friend Melanie and our three-year olds were playing together, her son came and asked if he could see the frogs.  We could see one frog sitting on a rock in the tank.  Knowing that we had two frogs, he asked where the other one was.  I told him he was probably hiding, since that was what he always like to do.  To try and appease this little boy's request, I opened the lid to the tank and lifted up a fake plant to see if the other frog was there.
And this is what I found:

 

Holy. Shit. Mother. Of. Crap.

Those are BONES.

I immediately put the plant back down and looked at my friend, gasping in a whisper: There are BONES under there!

She could not believe it. And then I showed her.  And then we both looked at each other like WTF?!  

I immediately thought I had been so neglectful that it had died ages ago and I didn't notice. 

I tried to remember the last time I saw BOTH frogs in the tank, and I can honestly say that the last time I recall them both being in there was three weeks ago.  We came back from the in-laws' place from Christmas and I noticed one of the frogs was a little gaunt and not moving.  I wondered if he was dead, but I was pretty sure I saw his throat/gullet moving.   I went to the pet store to get them some crickets, came home and dumped them in the tank. The crickets were gone by the next morning.

Was it possible that the frog died and decomposed to BONES in three weeks? No, I didn't friggin think so. The water was not murkey, the other frog was not illin' from any decomp in the water.  Plus, I didn't see anything!!  No dead bloated floating frog, nothing.

Then it dawned on me: that frog ATE his friend. Flippy ATE Floppy.  Oh.My.God. ACK! ICK! You FAT MURDERING BASTARD!

Fatty McMurderson

Melanie's son, all the while patiently trying to figure out why we were gasping and whispering, asked where the other frog was.  I let her handle this with her own son.  She talked about the cycle of life and that sometimes in nature, animals eat each other.  He was totally cool with that.  He ran off an played with Keesadilla, not thinking anything of it.

Meanwhile, I looked at Melanie and whispered: "WHAT am I going to tell Sashimi??"

Melanie: Umn, you could tell him you're having frog legs for dinner?

After Melanie and her son left, I kept walking past the frog tank, completely freaked out.  I looked at the remaining frog, all plump and smug. I kept whispering as I walked by the tank: You're a MURDERER! HANNIBAL TOAD!

I couldn't handle having this creepy plotting toad in my house.  He looked at me with a half grin on his smug cannibalistic face, like "You're next, Cricket-bitch.  Mwahahaha!"

I called my sisters. I called Tony.  I called another friend.  I just did not know what to do.  All I could picture in my head was this demon frog hovering over the bones and sputtering "My own! My PRECIOUS!" while he ate his own friend.  His ONLY friend.

 Holy. Poop.  My thoughts exactly. This was some CRAZY shit.

Coupled with the fact that we had found out last week that the only pet store in town (where I buy live crickets and worms to feed the frogs) is going out of business, I did not know what to do. The frogs were already close to their life expectancy. I couldn't get live food to feed Flippy anymore. I did not have any other frogs for him to attack. I did not want to become his next victim. I knew I had to euthanize him.  And I had to do it fast before Sashimi came home.

This felt horrible to me, as much as I don't like murderous frogs, I don't like being a killer.  I have never killed anything other than flies and mosquitoes. How do you euthanize a frog? I talked to my mom, and she said to flush him down the waterslide to heaven.  ICK!  But short of going all psycho on him and stabbing him or beheading him, that's all I could think of, too.

So I did it. I put him in the toilet bowl and flushed. And he swam like a bugger and almost didn't go down.  I flushed about five more times.  Little bubbles came out, and I swore he was just hiding in there, waiting to pounce.  So I flushed again. And again.

I then took everything out of the tank and put it in the garbage. Then I dumped the water and put the tank outside to freeze and let Tony deal with in the spring.  I looked at the clock: 4:00 pm.  Sashimi would be home in 10 minutes.  I calmed myself (and flushed the toilet a few more times) and thought of what I would tell him.

And I will never use that toilet again without pre-flushing.