From Gloria Campisi at the Philadelphia Daily News:
When love is in the air, the last thing one might be thinking about is the Philadelphia Streets Department.
But the Streets Department is thinking of the amorous toads of Upper Roxborough. It has issued a permit to close Eva Street and part of Port Royal Avenue for that neighborhood's annual toad migration.
Whenever the toads get around to making it, that is.
The migration is a mating ritual during which the toads leave the woods around the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and head for the Roxborough Reservoir to find a toad of the opposite sex.
Rainy weather and a series of warm days are their siren song to burrow out from the loose soil where they have spent the winter in dormancy and kick up their heels.
Volunteer toad-spotters are prowling the roads at twilight to alert the toads' protectors to put up city-approved temporary detour signs.
The Streets Department permit was the outcome of a drive spearheaded by animal activist Lisa Levinson to keep the green-and-brown amphibians - identified by naturalist Doug Wechsler as American toads - from being squashed by cars using the side roads to avoid stoplights on Ridge Avenue.
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