“Toad legs,” grumbled Jake.
“Get going! We only have two minutes left.”
Still grumbling, Jake bounded toward the changing tent. Already, I could see his legs were bandy and far less than straight. I smiled quietly.
“And Jake!” I said and he entered the tent and pulled the flaps after him. He poked his head back out to look at me questioningly.
“We’re all depending on you!” I told him.
It was Beth’s turn to elbow me. I looked at her in surprise. She shot me a frown and turned a smile to Jake. “You can do it! It’s just like stealing ice cream!” she shouted. Jake’s frown changed into a grin and he vanished back into the tent.
“Don’t pressure your team, encourage them!” Beth said.
I looked at her and nodded. “You’re right.”
We barely had time to get into position before the hunting horn blew again. It was time for the next race.
Jake burst out of the changing tent and hopped straight up to the line. He waited there at the bottom of the balance beam. He had changed completely into a toad this time. He wasn’t a small animal either, I figured he weighed in at least one hundred pounds of toad. He wasn’t pink, and still half-human, this time he was all toad. He had brownish and grayish skin on top, with a pale white underbelly underneath. A few of the girls wrinkled their noses. But Jake took no notice. He looked prideful, if such a thing can be imagined a toad’s face. I smiled to see his expression. A few complements from Beth had done him a lot of good.
My whole team craned their necks to see who was going to be up against him. Out of the tent walked Thomas, in dog form, head and tail held arrogantly high. He too, had gone for a full change. He was a malamute, with a fluffy curled tail, a wolf’s pointed ears and spooky, pale blue eyes. He looked over at Jake and curled back black dog lips to reveal a set of white fangs.
No one laughed immediately at Jake this time. There was just a bit of twittering from the other side. When a third horn sounded however, and Jake began hopping up the balance beam with big, laborious, humping hops, that’s when the laughter really got going. Determinedly, staring straight ahead, Jake ignored it all. He didn’t have an easy time of it. Toads are not really built to climb a narrow surface. I’d never seen a toad walking along the top edge of my back fence. I’ve seen cats and birds up there, but never a toad. This is for good reason. They are not well-built for balance.
But then again, neither are dogs. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a dog balancing up on the edge of my back fence, either. Thomas had difficulty getting a grip with his paws on the balance beam, which was varnished and smooth. I recalled watching my dog Benny try to climb a ladder. Dogs attempting a steep climb always looked funny. They just aren’t built for the task. The two slowly worked their way up their respective beams. Jake tottered, struggling not to fall off to one side or the other, while Thomas scrabbled and strained scratching desperately with his hind claws. Watching a huge toad and a dog struggling and slipping on narrow sticks of wood was too much for the crowd. Both teams laughed openly at the spectacle. Even I had to smile, despite my worries. If I hadn’t been a worried team captain, I probably would have screamed with laughter myself.
They both finally made it to the top. Thomas was slightly ahead. He nosed open the door at the top first.
“Two points red team,” shouted Urdo.
I sighed quietly to myself. Perhaps I had made a mistake. But I did not let these thoughts show on my face. I did not give the slightest hint of my concern. I felt the eyes of my own team on me, and I worked hard to look confident and determined. I let myself frown, but that was all. I didn’t want to let them lose hope just because I did. To keep everybody else doing their best, I pretended it was all part my plan.
The next obstacle, of course, was the tire swing. I had to figure that this one was probably going to be a bit easier for Jake than it would be for Thomas. How was a dog supposed to handle a tire swing? He did what he could, making an especially a big long leap across the room. Jake took a similar leap. Being a toad, he lashed out with his tongue to grab the rope that the tire hung down upon. His powerful hind legs uncoiled, firing him into the air and at the same moment that huge pink tongue shot out and wrapped itself around the rope. The crowd gasped as he slung himself around the tire swing and managed to land with some smoothness on the ledge on the far side.
There was scattered applause from our team. Beth and I clapped the hardest.
Thomas did not fare so well. He leapt halfway to the tire itself. Scrabbling with his hind paws for a grip on the rubber, he swung back and forth a few times before vaulting himself the rest of the way to the final ledge. Dogs do have good jumping muscles in their hind legs, but not as good as toads. He more or less did a belly flop on the ledge. He let out a painful whooshing sound, which made everyone wince, but managed to cling to the ledge.
But Jake was the first one into the cloth tunnel beyond.
“Two points blue team.”
My team all whooped and shuffled quickly to see what the next obstacle would be. The curtain dropped, and at first it looked like there was nothing. It was just a flat circular area. There were no obstacles in sight, just a big expanse black cloth. Of course, I knew right away, and sucked in air over my teeth. Everyone else made similar sounds of concern.
“What is it?” asked Beth.
Jake hesitated, knowing just as we did the dangers that lay before him.
“Holes,” I said, “there are holes out there. You can’t see them, but there are spots in that cloth surface that will cause you to fall right through into a pit.”
“Ah,” said Beth, nodding.
Jake hesitated, but Thomas didn’t. We got there about two seconds after Jake, didn’t bother looking for weak spots in the cloth, he simply started running around the left edge of the black circle. It was a good, but gutsy, strategy. Usually, the holes were in the middle to catch someone who simply scrambled across without expecting the trap.
Jake, seeing he was being left behind took another mighty leap. It looked to me as if he was deciding to simply vault across the entire obstacle as he had done with the tire swing. But this time, he didn’t quite make it all the way to the opposite ledge. His gamble failed just as Thomas’ did. They both found a pit hidden right before the opposite ledge. Neither one of them made it.
Thomas sailed into his hole, front paws first. For a moment. His tail and hind legs were still visible, he struggled, trying to catch hold of anything he could, but then down he went. A buzzer sounded. It was over. Thomas was out of the race.
At that moment, Jake was already in the air. He was coming down hard, his eyes bulging.
“Oh no,” said Beth.
In a desperate move, Jake shot out his tongue the last second, trying to find something to hold onto on the far side. He, like Thomas before him, shot down into a dark hole. From our point of view, he seemed to vanish into the floor. Briefly, his tongue attached to the steel tubing that held up the next ledge, but he couldn’t pull himself up with his tongue alone. His legs were caught up in the net set up at the bottom of the pit to catch people as they fell. He struggled for a few moments, but finally gave up. A buzzer sounded again.
There was a pause. Everyone looked to Urdo. She had been standing between the two obstacle courses watching both contestants carefully.
“Two points blue team,” Urdo said, after only a bare moment’s hesitation.
My teammates went wild with cheering.
“Same ruling as with Haley,” I said. “He touched the goal, so he won the points.”
“At least she’s fair,” said Beth.
Everyone was clapping me on the back as if I had done something. We were ahead, for the first time. Danny’s team on the other side look positively glum. This was a much better performance than anyone had expected from Jake.