“When the groundhog casts his shadow
And the small birds sing
And the pussywillows happen
And the sun shines warm
And when the peepers peep
Then it is Spring”
― Margaret Wise Brown

We wait for the sound of peepers around here as a sure sign of spring’s arrival.  The thing is, those darn peepers love our pool.  We use tarps to cover it over the winter and, come spring, the peepers and toads hop up from the pond to procreate in the pool cover.  Before you know it, there’s a great big toad orgy in the pool!

A couple weeks ago we heard the first chirps out back.  Quickly the sound amplified to deafening volume after dark.  We sent out youngest out with the pool skimmer to get to work.  He loves catching frogs.

One night he collected 5 mating pairs of toads.  Another, 6.  Another 4.  Slowly, we scooped them all out and moved them over to the river nearby.  The evenings got quieter and quieter.

The real jackpot came when Baxter started scooping out eggs.  He pulled out more than 6 handfuls of eggs like this.  That would’ve been hundreds of tadpoles in the pool!

The boys had fun looking for frogs and toads and their eggs and it saved us a ton of work when we open the pool next month.  We will probably still have a few tadpoles to address but nothing like we would’ve if we hadn’t removed the frogs and eggs now.  And what an awesome experience to actually get to handle these amphibians and their eggs – nothing like hands on experiences like that to understand the lifecycle of an amphibian!