 Standing
Room Only After the rains, a mud puddle forms in the vacant lot next door. Soon strands of a mysterious-looking viscous substance lined with a multitude of tiny black dots can be found floating in the puddle. The translucent strands are so long that lifting one high over head; both ends might still dangle in the water. -------------------- These are toad eggs. Tomorrow they’ll hatch into thousands of limbless black tadpoles wriggling about in an inch or so of water to compete for the limited quantity of sustenance offered by the puddle. ----------------- Through days the sun beats down and the puddle dries up. But heroically I arrive just in time to rescue hundreds of gasping tadpoles from becoming a gray smear in the mud, just another fossil memory of toad love. In my aquarium at home the tadpoles sprout legs and transform into young toads, hopping about amusingly, gradually consuming larger and larger quantifies of fish food.
Finally overwhelmed by their voracity, I release them back out into the
world. They hop off to live out their amphibious lives, eating, sleeping
and reproducing just like the rest of us.
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