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Among the masses of fauna, the pigeon occupies a rung on the human scale of fuzzy affection somewhere between a common garden slug and the lesser polliwog.

It’s about 4.5 acres that straddles the curve through Frogtown where the bottom of the concrete channel has broken up and nature has burst forth, allowing polliwogs to swim.

But for Metz, the amphibians are more than decorative driving companions; each and every grown-up polliwog is a little stuffed conversation starter.

Alongside far more familiar polliwogs and salamander larvae, fairy shrimp swim upside down, rhythmically beating abdominal appendages that double as gills while they strain nearly microscopic sustenance from the water.

“We liked playing there, catching polliwogs. We’d get into ponds and mud. It was a good place,” he says.