“Daddy! Look! I see fish!”

The small stream that forms behind our house after heavy rain has always been a source of fascination for the Girl. At first, it was fascination mixed with a hefty dose of trepidation. As she grew older, more comfortable with the water, and taller, she realized that it posed no threat and in fact could be a wonderland right in her own backyard. Still, it is only a small trickle through most of the year, and I initially chalked up her discovery to imagination.

But sure enough, small creatures stirring. Tadpoles.

“Daddy, can I get in the water?” was only a question of time. “I want to catch a tadpole.” With the temperatures of late, though, that was of course out of the question.

Yet nothing makes a guy feel like a real dad like building something, spur of the moment, for his daughter. Some scrap lumber, a handful of screws, and we have a bridge.

“But you might find,” I explain as we’re walking down the hill to place the bridge over the small spring stream, “that catching tadpoles is a little trickier than you imagine.”

And so it was. Today.