THE SUMMER rains in the Southwest are heavy and cold, with the ability to drop three inches of rain in an hour and reduce visibility to less than ten feet. And when conditions are right, they bring the Spadefoot frogs—sometimes called toads—out of the burrows where they have sat dormant for as much as a year. The pooling waters tell them to emerge from their holes once again, to start another new generation of their kind.

With the mass egress of these adult toads, late evenings and early mornings are filled with the sounds of frogs bellowing their distinctive high-pitched croaks, like flocks of bleating sheep breathing helium. In the next several days, they will eat enough to sustain them until the seasonal rains come again next year, and during this mad feast they will find time to mate and lay their eggs. With that act, the perpetuation of their species becomes one of life’s great races against time.

Within a week or so, if the pools of water remain long enough beneath the blazing desert sun, thousands upon thousands of eggs will have hatched, gray-green tadpoles will have filled those tenuous pools of life, and the tadpoles will have transformed into little Spadefoots no larger than the nail of my smallest finger. They will hop along the muddy ground, everywhere a person might look, scattering like hoards of jumping spiders.

Each of these tiny creatures, if it survives for another few years, will one day emerge from the sand and clay to breed its own generations. It will be one of only three or four of its brood who have managed to survive until adulthood, a rare survivor from amongst perhaps four thousand eggs. This makes each of these little frogs I see this week, each one I pick up to briefly admire, a valuable chit in life’s game of chance. “You are a piece of a giant gamble” I think as I look at one and smile solemnly. I dare not hold it for long. I gently place it back upon the mud, and it hops away energetically as if it has someplace important to go, and soon—to where and when only God knows.

It is in this gamble that the wondrous, bittersweet beauty of life plays out its hand. It is not so different, I suppose, from the sea turtle hatchlings I find so stunning. It is not so different, I suppose, from the human babies of our world; but I choose not to think of that parallel today. Some games are too big to ponder, and the comprehension of them requires a genius I do not possess—and a strength I cannot muster today.

MY OWN children see these baby frogs in an entirely different light. For children, to love and adore these little creatures is to keep them in a bucket, constrained so that they may be held, petted and admired at will. For the most part, children see love as involving a form of possession and control. There is no malice, of course, in the love of children; there is simply a lack of sophistication—a lack of experience to tell them, “This creature exists for purposes other than yours.”

It is not an easy thing to teach children that little animals are usually best left in their natural environment. Even if an animal withers and dies in their possession, the lesson is often lost on the next species of baby that enthralls them. In fairness, there’s something natural in all of this; the human trait of forming an emotional bond with other species is undeniable, and obviously has served us well. And later in life, all these experiences of my children will serve them as a lesson; to help build a more mature compassion whose seeds have already sprouted within them. Heaven knows that the simple joy I receive from seeing a butterfly in flight is enhanced by the fact that I caught, mangled and gassed more than my fair share of them when I was a child. Perhaps it is that they now show me life is resilient, that beauty is unstoppable, and that no matter how much devastation I bring in life, I am after all scarcely a ripple—a drop of rain in a great sea of creation. No matter how ugly I may at times be, I cannot mar life’s beauty for long. I too am a froglet, facing both chance and time.

My children will learn, as I did, that too much of some kinds of love is toxic, and often fatal. They will learn that creation functions as it should only when the created is left to manifest itself freely, without buckets and boxes and cages and leashes. They will learn this lesson when it comes to tadpoles and froglets, to bunnies and chicks, and to whatever other kinds of creatures they may happen upon in life. Of this I am confident, but my prayer, one that I offer in a hope born of faith, is that my children will learn this lesson to its full extent; that they will never cage, leash, or pretend to possess another human being—nor let such a thing be done to them. This, it seems, is a lesson that some men never learn.

THESE ARE the whispers in my mind as I look at this miniscule amphibian—tiny, fragile, and oh so exquisite atop my fingertip. He may never, ever bleat out a song of longing on a cool and damp desert night. The odds say, in fact, that he will not. But in this moment he is beautiful, and he has a chance. In that beauty, and in that chance, is the magic of his very existence. Perhaps I am simply a madman, but as I watch him hop away, I feel an entire world stir within me.