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When I was 3 years old, my family moved to the country. My parents had grown up in New York City, but where my mother loved big-city life, my father yearned for wilderness. So that's sort of where we went. The house they bought was on the side of a very small mountain. It was surrounded by woods. There was a tiny creek below the house, running beside the road leading to it. The creek was so small that a 3-year-old could step over it and it was only about two inches deep. My father demonstrated his woodsy lore by building a dam out of the clay underlying the water. My sister and I were very impressed. The pond he made was maybe four feet wide and eight feet long. It was at least five inches deep in the center. This was enough. Every spring it was home to all sorts of amphibian and invertebrate life (frogs, toads, newts, water striders and diving beetles, caddis fly larvae, snails, spiders, and lots more). Every winter it iced over. We could walk right out on it, slide around, and watch spotted newts deliberately lumber across the bottom--in search of prey? One spring, I was probably about six, there was an explosion of baby toads. They were little kite-shaped things with their remnant stubs of tails. I was so excited that I captured a fistful of them and ran to the house on the path through the woods. I was going to show them to my mother, who surely would be just as excited to see this unusual bounty as I was. Halfway to the house I stopped and opened my hand. None of the toads moved. I was horrified. I left the baby toads among the leaves under the trees. Adult toads love the woods, so why not the little ones? I hoped they would recover. Looking back on it now I realize that I made two bad decisions. The toads were better off where I found them, even though many would have been gobbled by birds. And while adult toads are terrestrial, the babies with their tender new skins probably needed the water. There is no moral to this story. I never again saw such a bumper crop of toads, but there're always plenty of adult toads singing out their love in the early spring. And here in southern Louisiana, where I live now, the yard's full of toads large and small all spring and summer long.