A toad and a snake

April 20.


Saw a toad and a small snake.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1853

See April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank."); April 20, 1860 ("Moore tells me that last fall his men, digging sand in that hollow just up the hill, dug up a parcel of snakes half torpid . . .The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet . . .It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time.") See also April 2, 1857 (" I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life . .. A black snake was seen yesterday in the Quaker burying-ground "); April 5, 1857 ("This, then, is apparently the way with the toads. They very early hop out from under walls on to sidewalks in the warmer nights, long before they are heard to ring, and are often frozen and then crushed there"); April 16, 1855(" A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long.") April 16, 1861("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake."); April 25, 1859 ("Toads have been observed or disturbed in gardens for a week. One saw a striped snake the 3d of April on a warm railroad sand-bank");   May 19, 1856 ("A small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris”); September 3, 1858 ("I see a small striped snake. . . swallowing a toad.")

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

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