Gray Tree Frog, Kenny's

First thing this morning, just after I'd started drinking coffee and thinking about what I might discover on this hot, hot day, I got a phone call. It was about 7:30 and, as is often the case, my initial reaction was that it couldn't be good news. But the talking caller ID we have—one of the best inventions, in the non-stop and seemingly unstoppable robo-call era—told me that it was my next-door neighbor on the line, so I picked up and listened to his question. "Do we have any white toads around here?" he asked. I'd recently seen a black toad, I replied, but true white was more than a little out of the ordinary. It was still there, if I wanted to take a look, he continued, and when he told me where the batrachian had camped out—on his window sill—I knew the identity. Camera in hand, I charged up the hill to his house, and when he led me to the spot, which was about four feet off the ground, there, as I figured it would be, was a Gray Tree Frog, its remarkable skin-pigment cells turning the amphibian into a nicely camouflaged match to its painted surroundings. The GTF didn't seem to mind being detected.