Rain brings out the critters in my neighborhood

A little more moisture than usual and things that scurry, wiggle, squirm and croak go crazy.

I love the noise the toads make when they sing after a rain, but it can be a little unnerving when one lone bullfrog sets in to croaking nearby. Apparently, there are more actual bullfrogs inhabiting our area. I’m not sure where they hang out when there aren’t puddles everywhere.

My sister commented on recently watching the car headlights shining on a large puddle and seeing the eyes and bulging sacs of all those frogs. A creepy image even if I haven’t seen it recently myself.

I have raised multiple crops of tadpoles in the gutter next to my driveway this year. Pretty strange to see the water against the curb boil with tadpoles as you prepare to drive through or jump over to get the mail. The repeated hatching and stranding of those undeveloped frogs led to a pretty good stench. Somehow, a few have made the transformation, because I’ve seen dozens of tiny toads on my driveway.

The most amazing thing with that standing water is that so far the mosquitoes aren’t too bad.

Other insects are thriving, however. I’ve killed some of the biggest roaches ever this year. At the fair building as I was closing one night I saw one cheeky roach trying to make off with a full bowl of candy. As my mother likes to put it after stomping, “he’ll never have the guts to do that again.”

Spiders seem to have adopted my bathroom as their own special habitat. One day the dog dropped a dog toy in the middle of the floor and a really fast spider broke cover from behind the stool to run and hide underneath the plush toy. After finishing my business I plucked the toy up planning to dispatch the tiny arachnid. When I lifted it up he began making concentric circles rapidly and I was so dumbfounded that he escaped by suddenly bolting for the cabinet.

Another encounter with a spider was downright horror movie footage. A great big wolf spider or maybe daddy longlegs kept poking its hairy face out the overflow hole in the sink just two inches adjacent to my hairy bellybutton. I grabbed the metal drain stopper and waited until the thing stuck one-fourth of its eight legs out the howl and I pinched the legs and flipped her out into the sink where I squashed her good. I say her because in the same instance that I put the squash on her scads of tiny spiders, scads meaning hundreds or at least dozens spread all over my sink. I couldn’t rinse ‘em all down and soon they were all over the wall. I hit them with Febreeze fabric refresher, which helped some but days later I’m still seeing tiny spiders around the lavatory.

My mother told me about this phenomenon but I laughed at her. I shouldn’t have done that I realize now.

The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout

Down came the rain and washed the spider out

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain

And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]