Last night it stormed, and there were tornadoes dropping out of the sky all over town. With a sixteen-year-old roof, I'm not averse to a few quarter-sized hailstones ricocheting off the shingles, and I went out back to check out the prospects. What I found instead was a big frog party, just getting underway. Toads, actually. Gulf Coast toads, to be specific. See, I have a pond or three out back. And when the local toad population smells rain, they come a'hoppin. And they were already arriving when I was out checking the hail.

We stayed up late, waiting to see if we needed to put our tornado action plan into effect. The plan, as I reviewed last night with Laura, is to go to an interior closet, cover ourselves with blankets, and then make love like Gulf Coast toads until the storm passes. Well, she wasn't having any of my tornado action plan, so we sat watching the doppler radar and listening to the toads. They stayed up late, too. 

 Eventually I went to the other end of the house, the better to tune out the toads and get some sleep. This morning I noticed we had gotten two inches of rain in the guage, but more than that I noticed two pairs of toads, still in the pond, still carrying out their tornado action plan. I bid my toads adieu, and headed off to work.

Upon returning home this afternoon, I reset the pond pump, which had kicked its GFI circuit during the electrical storm, and checked out the results of the frog mating. I found there had been at least three pairs of toads in the water, so the impoundment should be full of tadpoles a week or so from now, which makes me happy for reasons I can't even articulate.

We are expecting additional showers tonight, and it may be there were some females that didn't jump in the water last night, so a second orgy could ensue. Usually, once they mate I don't hear a croak for at least a month. But usually, there is never more than a single pair of toads in the water. I was quite surprised to find so many females in the water at once. It has always been such a standard process--one female and one male mating--that I thought maybe there was some sort of territoriality going on among the females, so that only one pair would ever mate. (There are always at least a half-dozen males, vying for the female's attention, but always, up to now, only a single female in evidence.) But now that they have broken the one pair barrier, I fully expect for them to break the one night rule, too. Right now, the sun is still shining, but I hear a male already warming up for the evening's festivities.

 Toads are cool! I actually can't sleep when they're having a big night (and I should point out that sometimes they will carry on for four or five nights before any mating at all takes place--you can imagine how popular I am in the neighborhood: WhoNvitedHim, indeed!). But I love the results of the toad mating, and I always love finding dozens of tiny, tiny toads jumping around the landscape eating fire ants in July and August. So, I do my best to tune the little croakers out, and wait for the good times later on.

Oh, and the contractor who checked out the roof today led us to expect some good news from the adjustor.