Detail from October, by Eric Griswold.
So I took the dogs out for little evening stroll a few minutes ago. Around the corner and a ways, there is a little wetland, a marshy pond next to a ditch, just behind the Seventh Day Adventist's Church parking lot. Half a block away from the corner there, I heard this loud, kind of grinding noise, and it got louder and louder. Some kind of machine ... ?
Took me a minute to realize it was hundreds, maybe thousands of small frogs in full throat. I don't know what kind, probably Pacific Tree Frogs -- the voices were high-pitched, shrill, almost like crickets, and it was as loud a collection of amphibians as I heard since leaving Louisiana. I hear them now and then in wet and warm weather, but never this many at once.
So I crossed over and took out my flashlight and shined it into the mire. Caught the reflections of some tiny eyes, and they all shut up, like somebody clicked off a switch. One second, it was like grinding concrete -- the next, completely silent.
Hey, whoa! Somebody up there with a flashlight. Better shut up and stay off the sonar, dude, never know but he's some coonass eats guys like us ...
Always something new going on the neighborhood.
2 comments:
Oooooh, BABY! It's Spring and the sounds of raw, unbridled Amphibian Lust are in the air.
Driving home at night from my girlfriend's during my teen years, I was on a road with swamp on both sides. Little frogs by the hundreds loved to hop from one swamp to the other -- until they found various parts of themselves squeezed into the treads of passing car tires. There was no way to avoid them.
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