pho To of frog cour Tesy Maine audubon; o Ther pho Tos provided by The au Thor

Listening to the breeding calls

of frogs and toads on cold spring nights in northern Maine may not be a vacation for every family. For my clan, it was better than Walt Disney World.

But that was the happy ending. It didn’t start that way.

Fascinated by amphibians and reptiles since he could walk, at age two my son, Leon, kept tadpoles in my mother’s best crystal vases. At five, he put a terrarium on the kitchen table where he would tend spring peepers, wood frogs, or spotted salamanders in carefully constructed habitats for a few days before returning them to the wild. The day I found the terrarium inhabited by a garter snake with a green frog’s legs dangling from its mouth, I moved the rig to the front porch.

So when Leon turned nine and I heard about the Maine Amphibian Monitoring Project (MAMP), which invites regular folks to collect valuable data for scientists about frog and toad populations, I didn’t have to think twice—I just signed us up. What better way for the three of us to get away together and do something we loved? My husband, Mark, is the consummate birder, mushroomer, hiker, camper, fly-fisherman, you name it. I am a keen amateur. And our son was infatuated with all things that hop, creep, or slither. It was a brilliant idea.

When I opened the information package from Maine Audubon, the US Geological Survey’s state partner in the administration of this continent-wide project, I was even more excited. Three times over the course of the breeding season, at a remote location in northern Maine, we’d drive a set route and stop

at each of 10 specified locations for five minutes. At each stop we’d take note of the weather conditions, listen for amphibian calls, assign a ranking to their volume, and record our observations.

Perfect, I thought. I ticked off all the great things Leon would learn. He’d be able to identify the calls of eight frog and one toad species. He’d learn how scientists collect data and why it has to be done according to a set of rules. And we’d be away together, just the three of us.

When I told him about my plan, he said, “But we do that kind of thing all the time.”

“Yes,” I said, “but this is different. This is real science—not just our usual rambling in the woods. We’ll be collecting information about how many amphibians live in these places so that scientists can figure out whether their populations are growing or declining. That’s important work.”

Silence.

“Look,” I explained, “it’s like this. You know how we go out on the roads and move frogs, salamanders, and newts out of harm’s way on those rainy nights in April when they’re migrating to their breeding pools? You know how good you feel when you save all those lives?”

A small glimmer of interest.

“Remember the frog you found that had only three legs? And how sad you were because you knew it might have had something to do with the environment no longer being healthy for them?”

I was definitely snagging him.

“This is the same thing. It’s just a different way of helping.”

I explained to him that the information we would gather might help scientists learn more about the health of the

Above: The author and her son, Leon ( 9), at base camp; a peeper in full breeding call; Leon explores a vernal pool; and takes up whittling