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WhiIby Free Prea, Wmensday, April 24, 19M, Page 7 But finding tSad in your own back yard isn't sport. The way things'happen is this: you make special trips to the pond, or to the undrained corner of the park,, or to Rabbit- Foo-Foo's Forest. And when you find littie baby toads, you pop them into your empty margarine container and bring them home. You keep them ini a big bucket and try to remember to feed them, until one day when you're not looking your father lets him go. After that firat taad sighting last Saturday, the return trip home took a new turn: a toad-spotting event. Did you know, for exaxnple, that in a warm, spriîig rain toads emerge in huge numbers ta hop acrosa paved roads? Maybe it's the toad version of chicken. The two-kilometre trip home took on a painful twist. How can you not care about these cuddly little wart- encrusted mratures? The first one took some swerving to avaid. Number two appeared on the opposite side of the road, sadly too slow, the victim of oncoming fraflkc. Number three escaped by a hippity, which is slightly less than a ful hop. Looking out in fear for helpless hoppers bas added aniety ta a young girl's life. Meanwhile, the taad hunts near home continue. If memory serves right, the full season for taads lies stili two months away. rm not a naturaliat, but do remember past year when ail the power of the July 1 fireworks failed ta divert attention fmom the discovery of bordes of dime-sized toads alive i the grasses in the GM office parkting lot. So we have weeks of good hunting left. The real beneficiary of this love of nature will be the Swan garden. Mll little toada eventually find thefr way under the Hosta leaves. We have for them feasts af aphids. This is truly a happy hunting graund. One of last year's taads spent several days at school, several mare caged i 'ur backyard. He was named Gee- Gee, after a certain Grade 4 teacher. Toad hunting wiIl continue for several years at the Swan household, at least as' long as, ifs good for the garden. Which wll be until she isses one and it turna into a prince. Once that happens, aur garden wâll neyer be the same.'-, I ~8.7aaTYI ___mi: MYRTLE BOUSE HMYEL, MYffFLE STATION, C. 1910 The frame hotel at left was buiît about 1885 on the north aide of the CPR, tracks. After a Local Option vote prohibited the serving of alcoholic beverages in the hotel, it was used as a restaurant and general store. It was destroyed by fire on March 29, 1919.Wih mhv ht 10 YEARS AGO from the Wednesday, April 23,1986 edition of the WIJJTY FREE PRESS " Whitby Recreation Director Wayne DeVeau bas8 resigned after serving the town for il years. " Anderson Collegiate students won first prize ia regional mathematica conteat for 32 area achoola. " Whitby's Sea Cadets won a band and drill competition in Toronto. " Whitby Senior Public School Concert Band will perforni in Montreal and New York. 35 YEARS AGO from the Thursday, April 20,1961 edition of the WHITBY WEEKLY NEWS' " Norman Irwin bas resigned froni the Whitby Community Arona Board after serving eight years. " Town Council has refused to cqver a $3,000 deficit in the construction of the new municipal building. A A$350,000 motel is proposed for the southern part of Whitby. * Dominion stores are selling veal chopa at 79 cents a pound. 100 YEARS AGO froni the Friday, April 24, 1896 edition of the' WIITBYCHRONICLE *Thomas Huston, Whitby's Clerk-Treasurer'aince 1859, wus found- dead at the town hall "under exoeptionally painful circumatanoes." *Jaclcson's store at Port Whitby la selling a two-pound loaf of bread for four cents. *A meeting will be held tonight at the Royal'Hotel to, organuze a baseballi club, . *Mis. R Collins la Whitby's champion in buckawing, wlnning al the sets of diahes offered as prizes at the medicine shows. - Toad season m WeTI knew spring had really arrived when my 1O-year-old daughter caught her firat toad. It wasn't really a big toad, as toads go. But it was larger than the fingernail-sized mites that first hop out of marhes and ponds. Hie was mid-sized, sort of like a teen- ager taad. "Can I keep hlm?' Erin asked. Predictably. What's the use of catching toads if y'ou can't keep them. She had found the toad in her brather!s fr-ont garden. It had crawled slowly out of a hiding spot, uxidoubtedly stili letbargic fram aur cooler than normal weather. More parental heads than Erins prevailed, and the toad was left in bis home garden. "She'll be better there," her mother, said later, symPatheticaiy. 'Maybe she's got a family of little toads ta look after. They'Il ail be happier." 11Muththth-enrr" replied the 1-year-old. "Troads don't have babies." "Well, maybe he has brothers and 'sister he doesn't want ta leave." "Toads lay eggs in ponds, and the eggs hatch, and become tadpoles, not fro tadpoles but toad tadpoles, and they grow, and then grow back lgs1 ndhe'opouo land. They don't know their brothers and sisters."l 'We could use several in aur garden," someone that sounded like me said. "Why don't you go out and see if you can flnd- any? '