Having been out of town all last week, I felt as if I needed some updates getting back to the East Coast. Joanie McDonell, who lives just up the beach from me, has been a faithful correspondent since I wrote in mid-spring about how it had been ages since I saw any toads or snakes around.
I might not be looking hard enough, because Joanie has now emailed several times about reptiles and amphibians, most recently of a “little fellow” toad under her desk and bullfrogs croaking at the end of Bendigo Road. Earlier, she wrote that a two-foot-plus-long rat snake had visited last summer.
Our very wet spring surely has benefited the toads, which lay their eggs in fresh water; the ponds and swamps here are full to brimming. Whether we have more Fowler’s or American toads around, I am not sure. They can most easily be told apart by their calls (the Fowler’s is like a sheep’s bleating). In the nighttime cacophony, it can be difficult for me to distinguish among all the buzzes, cheeps, and whirs coming from the brush.
Meanwhile, Spring Close Farms, which I accused last week of repacking store-bought strawberries from afar as local, fought back while I was away. I learned of its witty reply in a text message from Christine Sampson, a Star reporter who stopped to get a photo of a sign on Pantigo Road taking me to task. “Yes David. They are!” it read.
The sign remained for a while, then was changed to message about a special on pies. The jam I made with the suspect strawberries turned out well enough.