Levy Trail South

I walked Levy Trail South tonight in 34:23. I saw my first toad frog of the year right around 36th Street. Heck, I turned around to take another look just to make sure I had seen what I thought I'd seen. People from up north might not understand the significance of this sighting. Back in the '60s and '70s, as I grew up, I'd put the over-under on toads I saw a day at ten. Now I see one every two or three years. While I'm at it, green grasshoppers fall into the same category. Thirty years ago, they were all over the place in the summer, like toads. It's been two years since I last saw one—on the windshield of my Impala in the Levy Kroger parking lot. It seems odd to me that the climate-change advocates haven't harked on these changes, except that I myself only noticed the absence of toad frogs and green grasshoppers a couple of years ago (two or three, I think). All I'm certain of was that they were everywhere throughout my childhood and are almost nowhere now.

OVERHEARD
"I hate to say it, but I never gave a hoot about Aretha Franklin. She was sort of like Bob Dylan to me. I was probably missing something, but I never understood her popularity."
—Pete in a conversation with Z-Man