When I was a kid, there was a stream running through the woods behind my neighborhood. My two older brothers would spend summers playing in those woods, building forts with fallen twigs and creating dams to redirect the water flow. Of course, I would tag along to help. And, by “help,” I mean busting my ass on a rock within fifteen minutes of the adventure and having to be carried home. My brothers distracted me from my self-sabotage by showing me the tiny tadpoles that squirmed in the gentle current and taught me about their development into adult frogs.

Those memories and my lifelong appreciation for nature may be what saved me this summer. My current home improvement project, scheduled to take two weeks but now going on eight, would have sent most people into a violent rage. We’ve had all the concrete around the pool, our basement entrance, and our deck ripped up and hoisted into three dumpsters. May turned into June and, because of weather delays, dragged into July. Through weeklong rainstorms and brutal heatwaves, the contractors hit numerous obstacles and countless setbacks.

Amidst the chaos and the filth, my pool lay waiting. While I bitched to my husband and complained to the masons, last year’s water remained untouched in the deep end. Since the pool could not get its new liner and filter until the other work was done, algae began to grow. Then, they came.

The frogs.

I grew increasingly aware of the chirping. Each night, they became louder and louder, competing to show off their machismo to the ladies. I waded through the mud and the unevenness of my construction site to commune with the nature happening in my very own backyard. I steered clear of the occasional snake; I mourned the two baby bunnies that my dog, Lula, thought were toys; I appreciated the bats that had moved into the house we made for them as I was seldom bothered by mosquitoes. But I loved the music of the frogs conjuring up nostalgia from my childhood adventures with my brothers or my idyllic summers spent in rural Massachusetts.

Then, one night, my husband and I arrived home to discover the melody had become a symphony of croaking. We grabbed a flashlight and shone it around the pool area, expecting to find a mob of amphibious types staring at us with those bulging eyes. Instead, I found one lone pair of frogs. And, they were doing it. Froggy style!

Now, I’m generally too private to discuss my sex life but, let me tell you, lying in bed, night after night, listening to them playing dirty leapfrog, I admit to being a little envious. I’d heard that manly warbling and witnessed his triumph at having gotten the girl. Now, he was just showing off. For hours!

As the pool algae flourished, so did the eggs from the fornicating frogs. Next came the tadpoles. I mean thousands of tadpoles! My mother instincts kicked in as I watched those slimy heads with tails swimming happily in the putrefying water. My new babies. I tried to give each one a name, but after mistaking Becca for Tommy too many times, I decided they were all named Sasha.  I began taking pictures of them and telling my friends about the ecosystem I was now in charge of in my very own backyard. “Maybe I’ll just leave the pool as a huge pond,” I joked.

Until Pool Guy came by to check on the masons’ progress and let me know they’d be taking out the old liner in preparation for the work on the pool. “We’ll throw some bleach in,” he said, “then we can get started.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, reality settling around me. “The bleach will kill the tadpoles!”

He laughed. “Well, is it a pool or a pond? If it’s a pool, they have to go.”

“No bleach,” I told him. “How long until you need to pump out the remaining water?”

“A week.”

“Then, I have enough time to Save The Tadpoles!”

I knew I could never get every last one of them. But I could do my best to save as many as possible. So, the process began. For hours every night, my husband and I took turns with the pool net and scooped. We dumped our haul into a large pot and went back for more. Once we couldn’t fit any more into the pot, we’d take them to the nearby stream and release them into their new home.

It became a game to us – a quest. ‘Save The Tadpoles’ was our rallying cry. The masons worked during the day; we scooped during the evening. At first, it seemed futile. Finally, the horde began to thin. We got hundreds of tadpoles a night. We rescued a few dozen full-fledged frogs, and many, many that were at various stages in-between with legs and a tail.

Our friends and family learned what our immediate priority was. “Do you want to go to dinner tonight?” “No, we have to scoop tadpoles.” “Can you come to visit me this weekend?” “Sorry. Tadpoles.” They began to pitch in, eagerly taking the rescues to populate streams closer to their own homes.

At last, the day came for Pool Guy to throw in his pump and drain all remaining water. At 7 AM, I stood at the edge of the pool and calculated. There were still some stragglers bobbing around the edges. Could I get any more before the remaining water was removed? I could sure try! ‘No Tadpole Left Behind’ became my new cry. I scooped. Through the remaining muck and silt, I thrust in the netted pole and rejoiced at every silvery body I caught. They evaded me, but I persisted. With sweat dripping in the 90° morning, I was determined to save as many as possible.

Triumphantly, I took that stockpot with upwards of another 350 tadpoles, plus eight tiny frogs, and placed it gently in the passenger seat of my car. We drove to the nearby stream, and I hiked the distance from the street through the woods. I needed to get close to the water, right up to the edge. Unlike the frogs I released there with some regularity who could hop the rest of the way, these little guys needed to go right into the water. And, that’s what we did. As I stepped to the edge of the creek, the ground gave way beneath me and in I went, stockpot and all. Somehow, I managed to keep my charges upright as I landed knee-deep in mud and busted my ass on a rock. I dropped the lid and released them into the water. Little frogs hopped off, and big-headed tadpoles wriggled into their new home.

As I extracted myself from the quicksand-like suction of the sludge, I eyed the piles of beer bottles and cans that lay strewn around the woods. Instead of allowing someone else’s casual disregard of the environment ruin my celebratory mood, I picked up my stockpot, stomped off as much mud from my feet as I could, and began cramming that trash into my pot to take home for recycling. Sighing with satisfaction, I looked one more time toward the last great release. A snowy egret was soaring low above the surface of the stream.

* * * * *