Back in high school in the 1970s, I wanted to be a biologist, because I was fascinated with amphibians and lizards.

Part of that fondness grew from backcountry trips with my parents across the nation, watching and catching Maine’s frogs and toads and those of the Arizona desert in which I was raised with my five siblings.

As a kid, frogs were cool, slimy jumpers that could catch you fish or snakes when no worms or bugs could be found to use as bait.

They could also freak out most girls in school and some schoolteachers when they “accidentally” got loose in classrooms, which had some rather unpleasant side effects at home after that long walk to the principal’s office with “Rosie the Ribbiter.”

But put me in a biology class and ask me to dissect one and I couldn’t. That’s why I took earth science and photojournalism in high school and college.

One of the things I like most about frogs and toads, is, that something so small can make so much noise. Yet, whenever you arrive wide-eyed at a vernal pool searching for the source of the weird sounds, that perceived big scary space alien was always an itty-bitty frog that kicked off from shore the second you bent down for a closer look.

So, when I learned last month that the Maine Amphibian Monitoring Program had a route opening in Bethel, naturally, I jumped for it. But unlike the owl monitoring surveys my wife and I did for Maine Audubon a few years back, I had to complete online testing and score a detection index of 65 or better to prime my ears for Maine’s nine species.

Of course, spring peepers and wood frogs are the only two usually heard around here in early spring and, they’re easy to distinguish. Peepers will blast your ear drums out at half a mile, while wood frogs sound like your bathtub rubber ducky.

Listening to frog calls on the U.S. Geological Survey’s public frog quiz site, was like a homecoming, because some calls I’d heard before, but never associated species with the sounds.

Cranking up my computer speaker’s power woofer to better hear the distant peepers and wood frogs, attracted our cat, and, eventually, my wife.

At first, we had trouble differentiating between northern leopard frogs, whose call is a long slow snore like the creak of an old door opening, and pickerel frogs with their shorter and faster snoring, like a finger pulling comb tines.

And, then mink frogs, whose voices sound like the rapid distant hammering of nails or tapping together of two sticks, sometimes sounded like chorusing wood frogs. But, I scored an 89 on the actual test. I didn’t misidentify any species in the 10 sound bites, I just didn’t hear a few species in two questions.

After learning that peepers were out in Bethel, my wife and I started our first survey about an hour after dusk on April 27. While not desirable, roadkill froggies were a good sign that we’d hear frogs that night. I also spotted a few peepers hopping across the wet road.

At the first stop, I promptly put the thermometer I took off the side of our house – the one my wife told me not to take – atop the van roof to measure the temperature, then we listened for five minutes in warm drizzle to a few peepers.

By flashlight I recorded the scientific information we’re supposed to track, then off we went to the second stop, where we heard the mother lode of peepers – a full chorus – and a few wood frogs. I was in my element until I remembered I forgot to take the thermometer off the roof at stop one and had to break the news to my wife.

Einstein probably got a few “You idiot!” remarks in his life, I told myself while getting harangued on the drive back to stop one to get what was left of the thermometer.

Still, I’m looking forward to the next trip in a few weeks, when we’ll be listening for northern leopard frogs, pickerel frogs, American toads, and gray tree frogs, but, hopefully, not my wife’s shrill peeper-like vocalizing.