The woman was shaking her head no, and the man took it well, nodding politely. He was moving on to the next house when he saw me and Earl. “Hey,” he said, waving.

“Or ducts,” Earl said to me. “Maybe he want to clean your ducts.”

“I don’t have any ducks,” I said. “I don’t even have chickens.”

“You guys got a moment?” the man said, only a couple of yards away now. We shrugged, sure.

“My name’s Samuel Spender,” he said. “I’m with the Willow Creek Preservation Society.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I didn’t give my name. Earl didn’t give his either.

“I’m trying to collect names for a petition,” Spender said. “To protect the creek.”

“From what?” I asked.

“From development. Willow Creek is an environmentally sensitive area and one of the last unspoiled areas in Oakwood, but there are plans to build hundreds of homes backing right onto the creek, which will threaten a variety of species, including the Mississauga salamander.”

“Who?” It was the first word from Earl.

“Here’s a picture,” Spender said, releasing a snapshot from under the clip of his clipboard. We looked at a four-legged, pale green creature with oversized eyes resting in a person’s hand.

“Looks like a lizard,” Earl said.

“It’s a salamander,” Spender said. “Very rare. And threatened by greedy developers who value profit over the environment.” He thrust the clipboard toward us, which held a lined sheet with about twenty signatures on it. There were other pages underneath, but whether they were blank or filled with names I couldn’t tell.

I hate signing petitions, even for things I believe in. But when it’s an issue where I don’t feel fully informed, I have a standard dodge. I said to Spender, “Do you have any literature you could leave me, so I could read up on it?”

“Yeah,” said Earl. “Likewise.”

Something died in Spender’s eyes. He knew he’d lost us. “Just read The Suburban. They’ve been following the story pretty closely. The big-city papers, like The Metropolitan, they don’t give a shit because they’re owned by the same corporations that put up the money for these developments.”

This didn’t seem like a good time to mention where my wife worked. Spender thanked us for our time and turned back for the sidewalk to resume door-knocking. “That house?” I said, pointing. “That’s mine, so you can skip it.”

“Salamanders,” Earl said to me quietly. “Think you can barbecue them?”

“They’d probably slip through the grills,” I said.

We chatted a moment longer. I told Earl, even though he hadn’t asked, that Paul intended to pursue his interest in landscaping, maybe go to college someday for landscape design. It was, for me, a surprising development. Most kids his age wanted to design video games.

“He’s good,” Earl offered. “He doesn’t mind getting his hands in the dirt.”