I stepped out the front door at home a few weeks ago and there she was, backed in up to her shoulders in potting soil in a container of fresh flowers.

“Well, good morning,” I said as I stepped off the porch to fetch the newspaper. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I reached down, gently stroked the back of her head and went into the house.

“Who were you talking to out there,” my wife asked.

“A toad,” I said.

“Hmmm,” she replied. “Don’t forget that tomorrow is trash day.”

Now, that’s about as close as she gets to talking toads, or for that matter, talking trash.

But I was curious. I thumbed through my nature books to try to learn why a toad would jump up two 8-inch flights of steps, then leap another 6 inches to get into a flower pot, when it had a large yard full of trees, shrubs and flowers.

The important thing I learned is that I had at first mistakenly called it a “he,” who turns out to be a she.

She stayed around for a week, leaving at night, being the nocturnal creature that she is, and returning in the morning. But instead of getting inside the flowerpot, she sat outside it, hidden by vines that draped to the floor.

She began living on the edge. She would sit on the porch floor, in plain view, ignoring our three dogs that breezed by her several times a day. And, she chose the most dangerous place on the porch to sleep; beneath a leg of a rocking chair.

She’d allow me to hold her (no, they won’t give you warts) and she’d often snooze on my lap.

She stayed around for two weeks, then disappeared one night and was gone for 10 days. I was sure she had found new digs. But four days ago, I picked up the potted plant to move it and there she sat, looking up at me.

Surely, she had to see the rabbit nest on her route to the porch. It is 15 feet from the rocking chair leg in a clump of day lilies. Nestled in a burrow lined by Mom’s fur and covered with a four-inch-thick bed of dead grass and twigs is at least one baby about 3 or 4 weeks old. There’s probably more.

I’ve never seen the mother, but I know she comes before dawn and at dusk to feed them her milk. To determine whether they have been abandoned, or if their mother has been killed, I crisscross thread across the top of the nest every third day to see if it gets disturbed by the mother.

(A good Web site for information on how a mother feeds her babies, what to do if a nest is disturbed, and how to determine if the babies have been abandoned, and if so, what to do, is messinger woods.org/babybunny .htm)

And no, the mother will not abandon a baby that has been touched by humans.

Sometimes we just need to spend some time with nature: hold a toad, or peek inside a rabbit nest and see a baby bunny looking back.

We need to know more about those robins that we take for granted. I watched this spring as a female chose a nest site, built a nest from the inside out, using one wing to press string, paper, twigs, grass, feathers and other material into the shape of a cup, then reinforced it with soft mud.

After an incubation period of about two weeks, and a nesting period of 12 or 13 days, two babies fledged.

Sitting motionless on a utility pole a few yards away was a red-tailed hawk, a keen-eyed hunter of birds, rabbits and reptiles, waiting patiently for a young robin to make its first flight.

It returns almost daily, as if instinctively knowing that a baby rabbit, easy prey, is about to pop out of the nest.

As for the toad, she’s playing it safe from the hawk. She still hunkers down under a rocking chair leg. Go figure.