Hi there, kids! Brrrrr! It’s still really chilly here in the Paper Garden; your old pal P.Ray is freezing his little antennae off! Spring sure is taking a long time to warm up this year. Most of the bugs are still sound asleep. Lucky I’ve got my gnats to keep me warm!

Oh boy! A little bit of sun! Now you’ll see what I mean!

As the sun hits me, a cloud of gnats instantly surrounds my head. I reach for a drinking straw that I keep handy in my backpack and quickly slurp all the little bugs out of the air.

Yum! That was tasty; nothing like a good gnatshake to take the chill off! But I need BIGGER bugs; I sure wish it would warm up!

What’s that noise?!

I turn around to find a little cave-like opening that seems to lead underground.
Hey! Maybe that noise is a big tasty beetle waking up in there. I’ll go check it out!

It's soo dark and mysterious inside this cave…

Wow! Look at this statue! It must have been left here by some ancient civilization! I’ll bet it’s guarding a lost treasure!

I wonder if its eyes are really precious jewels — like in the movies!? Let me take a closer look…

I reach out to touch the statue's head and BOOM! One eye opens wide! "Yow! It’s alive! A monster frog from a lost world!!" I scream. I have to get out of here!

I turn and run out of the cave, only to be stopped dead in my tracks just outside of the cave as the earth shakes and a strange mound begins to rise up out of the ground in front of me.

BOOM! A creature erupts from deep within the ground! "Double yow! ANOTHER monster frog!" I scream again

From behind me I hear a calm voice say, "Toad." I turn around to see the what I thought was a statue snatch a fly from midair with its tongue.

"Toad," he says again.

I look back and forth at the two frogs and say, "I get it! You’re froggy twins, right?"

They both yell, "TOAD!"

"Okay, okay, I get it! You’re toads!" But I'm a little puzzled, so I ask, "What’s the difference?"

"Frogs live in the water, but like to spend time on the land," says the first toad.

"Toads live on the land, but like to spend time in the water," adds the other.

"Well, thanks for clearing THAT up, guys. But hey, how come YOU were buried alive?" I ask the toad who burst out of the ground. Turning to the toad I'd found in the cave, I continue, "And how come YOU were a statue? Did an evil wizard cast a spell on you???"

"No — we were hibernating," they say together.

"Most toads burrow into the ground when winter comes, and stay there until the soil warms up in spring…" says the first toad.

"And some of us find safe places in little burrows and such where we can sleep through the winter..." says the other.

"But we all 'slow down' and go into a torpor when the weather gets cold, and then wake up when winter is over," they both point out.

Turning back and forth between the two toads I say, "You guys are really getting on my nerves, you know that?"

As he starts to hop away, the first toad says, "Well don't worry, Mr. Mantis; we have to go anyway. Toads need clean water to raise their families in the spring…"

"...and we can’t stay here…," the other toad chimes in, "…because this is a GARDEN!"

"What’s wrong with gardens?" I ask. "This one even has a very nice pond!"

"Gardeners use pesticides and other chemicals that pollute the water in the ponds and vernal pools we use," answers one toad.

"And we amphibians are VERY sensitive to chemicals; we just can’t STAND them!" adds the other.

"You don’t have to worry about that here," I laugh. "This is an ORGANIC garden!"

"Organic…garden!?" the toads exclaim.

"That’s right — NO chemicals! I’m fairly sensitive to those myself. So go right ahead — the Paper Garden pond is just over there!"

"That’s great! C’mon, Tommy — last one in is a green-eyed tree frog!" I can hear the excitement in the toad's voice as they begin to hop toward the pond together.

Hibernate till it gets warm, huh? You know, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea!
I think I'll lay down…this leaf looks like a perfect blanket!

See ya next time, kids!

THE END


GLOSSARY WORDS

Hibernation: Winter sleeping where an animal's temperature, heart rate, and body slow down so much that it might appear to be dead.

Torpor: An extremely relaxed, mentally and physically sluggish state of being that some animals (including toads) go into for the winter. When in torpor, the animal doesn’t seem to see, hear, or feel things going on around it. The animal is groggy and takes a little while to wake up.

Pesticide: A man-made chemical that is used to kill pests on crops and may harm soil health and food quality over time.

Vernal pool: A low area of land that becomes flooded during a rainy season and creates a little pond. This "pond" dries up and disappears when the rainy season is over.

Amphibian: A cold-blooded animal that lives both in water and on land, and must return to the water to lay its eggs. Frogs, toads, and salamanders are amphibians.


Text, Mike "Typewriter of Doom" McGrath
Illustrations, Yasushi Fujimoto
Animation, Glenn Hughes