Yesterday kicked off with my dog and I getting chased by a javelina 100 yards from our house. But it ended on the Dragonfly Trail finding myself in the middle of a mini-toad migration. Weirdly, it was up on the flats, rather than down by Twin Sisters Creek, which, BTW, is flowing nicely. On the way back toward the trailhead, I noticed a little toad about the size of my thumbnail. Upon further inspection, I noticed it was far from alone. There were dozens and dozens of them, all heading the same direction, across the trail. Perhaps they were displaying some sort of genetically hard-wired homing instinct. Or maybe one member of the tribe decided to head over that way and all the other members of tribe decided to follow, maybe for lack of a better plan, a naturally selected-for trait that seems to have made its way all the way “up” to homo sapiens. I do not think these were dwarf toads; I think, rather, that they were babies, moving for the first time across a big and scary landscape full of creatures that would only be too happy to feast upon them, creatures their little baby toad brains could not even imagine. And then, out of the blue, up walks a creature a million times as large as these little toads: me. What a trip that must be. I mean, there is no animal that has ever lived that is as relatively large to a full-grown human as I was to those little toads. I carefully made my way through the baby-toad exodus, trying hard to avoid smooshing any of the little buggers. But I ran into several more columns of baby toads crossing the trail. It took me more than an hour in the gathering dusk to make it the last mile back to the trailhead because I was being extra careful about not smooshing the baby toads. I examined the deep lug soles of my trail shoes when I got back to my vehicle. No toad remnants. I was relieved. Good luck to all the baby toads making their way through a big and scary world.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:00:23 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015