Exhausted, caked in mud, eyes straining in the moonlight, I lurched through the Austin night. A rough day at ACL? Nope. Just helping with homework.

Since Bubba started at his new school, our evenings have turned into an episode of CSI. My wife and I are forensic investigators trying to piece together fragmentary evidence and interview reluctant witnesses in an attempt to get an answer to one simple question: Have you done your homework?

Most afternoons at about four thirty, one of us asks the dread homework question which sends our Person of Interest into a coma of eye rolling and flopping onto his bed. I then don those special goggles, get out the ultraviolet light and begin digging around in Bubba’s backpack. Little of use turns up — his assignment book has been crushed, wrinkled, spindled and partially burned.

Direct interrogation is also of little use. Bubba responds to the Bad Cop (my wife) with answers that would do an AIG exec proud. To the Good Cop he alternates “I did that in study hall” with “We didn’t have any” until I relent. On the night in question I ask: “Do you have any Science, at least?” “Nope,” he answers on his way out the door to soccer practice.

My wife and I are doing our best to find the right balance of homework help with our 6th grader. Obviously, the objective is for him to be able to manage his homework on his own. Unfortunately for Bubba, my wife and I have lots of experience (25+ years actually) in what his new school expects of students. We insist that he walk through all his nightly assignments with us. My wife is generally called in to help him through his math on a problem by problem basis.

The tension this involvement generates, combined with the hard work involved in getting the homework completed nightly, leaves us all crabby and exhausted by eight. After putting the younger kids to bed, I seek out Bubba for a little reading or TV watching. Just a few minutes without an agenda to reconnect after our evening of CSI.

Last Monday night, aha a Cowboy game! Totally beat, the two of us flop in the sofa for some restorative bonding and couch potato time before bed.

Before we’ve even settled in, Bubba points to the window above the TV and shouts, “I need that!” I follow his gesture to the window. “It’s my Science homework! I have to have it by tomorrow!” He is pointing at a gecko skittering across the window in pursuit of a moth.

So I find myself out in a drizzling rain carrying a bucket and a dishtowel, prowling around the house swearing under my breath. I’m a deranged, suburban Steve Irwin. My plan is to creep under the window and sweep unsuspecting amphibian into the bucket with the towel. What actually happens is: I lunge at the window, step in gooey mud, pull my groin, howl in pain, fling the bucket and say bad words.

I burst through the door wild-eyed and covered in mud. Bubba turns on his heel and runs, in tears, to his bed. I turn back around, collect my bucket, and limp into the night.

As I muck around, pointing a pen-light at every drainage ditch and muddy hole, I’m lacerating myself for my outburst, feeling guilt for putting my son in such a high-pressure school environment, wondering if my wife and I are really on the same page about education, and begging, begging the universe to put some damn creature in the bucket before I catch pneumonia.

As I turn over rocks in a full-blown rainstorm, I realize that I am hoping that a snake will bite me, as it will be easier to catch that way. After about an hour, it becomes clear that every living creature got the message but me — time to go inside. I’m trudging back through our yard when I almost step on the toad.

I’ve pulled Bubba out of bed, and he’s as excited as I am. The toad, less so. He jumps out onto the kitchen table (don’t tell my wife), and there is a scary moment before we get him back into his temporary home. By the time, I get Bubba tucked back in, I’m too tired to know if anything I have ever done is right, but I know this: If, as a teenager, he ever questions my love for him, I’m just going to say “Tell it to the Toad.”